The Kurdish Community Centre in Brandenburg, Germany has launched a petition on Change.org, in light of the 31 May knife attack in Mannheim.
On 31 May, an Afghan man repeatedly stabbed a far-right activist. A policeman who intervened was killed, and the assailant was shot and injured.
“In view of the Islamist terrorist attack on people in Mannheim, we feel compelled to remind those politically responsible of their responsibility, because peaceful life in Germany is of utmost importance to us,” the community centre wrote.
The petition calls for the banning and closure of the fascist Grey Wolves in Germany, which is the youth wing of Turkey’s Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). The MHP is in alliance with Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), led by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. In addition, the community centre is calling for action against the far-right Turkish affiliated group Osman Imperium.
The Grey Wolves are a Turkish supremacist organisation that vilifies a wide range of ‘internal’ and ‘external’ enemies of Turkey, including Kurds, Greeks, Armenians, Jews, Europeans, Chinese, Americans and the Vatican. The group has been linked to multiple acts of violence and murder in Turkey, Germany, France, Belgium and beyond. They are considered the biggest far-right movement in Germany.
The centre is also demanding a ban on ISIS related sects, including right-wing Islamic associations linked to the Turkish state in German mosques. The centre says that “these mosques have nothing to do with Islam. They abuse religion as a tool. They have a hostile attitude towards other religions and cultures.”
They are also calling on Germany’s Ministry of the Interior to “to prevent the dangerous activities of the structures that the Turkish state has built up over decades”, and specifically to close mosques connected to the “’Islamic Union of the Institute for Religion’, DITIB, which are affiliated with the Turkish state”. Among other things, DITIB has been accused of hosting Taliban officials in a Mosque in Cologne in November 2023.
Finally, the petitioners call for the Ministry of the Interior to ban Germany’s far-right Democratic Alliance for Diversity and Awakening (DAVA) party, which has been accused of being a political arm of the AKP within Germany. DAVA’s electoral candidates in the 9 June European elections all have connections to the AKP.
