A German court ruled on Wednesday that police acted unlawfully in stopping a peace delegation on their way to Iraqi Kurdistan in 2021.
In June 2021, German police detained members of a peace delegation called for by the Defend Kurdistan campaign who were travelling to Erbil (Hewlêr) airport in Iraqi Kurdistan. The group was stopped and questioned at Düsseldorf airport, and some were banned from travelling.
The 20-strong German delegation was heading to the border region of northern Iraq as part of a political initiative to support civil society organisations in the region and document human rights abuses by the occupying Turkish forces. Defend Kurdistan wrote that they intended to “support the civilian population living there as part of an international delegation in favour of a peaceful solution to Turkey’s war in South Kurdistan, which violates international law.” In total, the delegation included 160 people from 14 countries.
Delegation members were delayed for between four and five hours, causing them to miss their flight. Sixteen of them were banned from travelling to Iraq for one month. They were given a stamp in their passports reflecting the ban.
Authorities had said the reason for the travel bans was to prevent delegation members from providing the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) with “human shields” against attacks by the Turkish military. But the administrative court found that this concern was “unrealistic”.
The delegation was also accused of aiming to carry out activities that would jeopardise “the interests of the Federal Republic of Germany”, and of making propaganda for the PKK, which is classified as a terrorist organisation in Germany.
On arrival in Erbil, some of the delegation were further obstructed by authorities under the control of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).
On Wednesday, 28 August, Cologne Administrative Court ruled that the police’s actions were unlawful and that there was not enough evidence to substantiate the claims made against the delegation members.
Two of those who received travel bans had brought a lawsuit appealing the measures. A rally was held outside the court in solidarity with the claimants.
Delegation member Cansu Özdemir, who is part of Die Linke party, maintains that the action against the delegation was at the behest of Turkey. She told the Taz media website: “After the security check, we were surrounded by federal police officers… When I objected that I was a member of parliament, I was told: ‘This is an order from above’.”
“The ruling makes it clear how German politicians are unlawfully rolling out the red carpet for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan,” said Özdemir.
“The Federal Ministry of the Interior or the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs must have been involved in this order,” she added.
Climate activist Ronja O, who was part of the delegation and one of the plaintiffs in the case, told Taz that, “With our lawsuits, we want to make it clear that we don’t simply accept massive encroachments on our basic rights such as these ‘exit bans’.”
There is a marked increase in the use of ‘exit bans’ to prevent international peace delegations and human rights defenders from leaving Germany. On 30 July 2024, another delegation, this time of German students travelling to northern Iraq to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Yazidi genocide, was stopped at Munich airport.
The travel bans do not only apply to Kurds and their supporters. In 2023, a prominent German antifascist was prevented from travelling to Bulgaria.
AZADI, a legal defence fund for Kurds in Germany, welcomed the administrative court’s ruling, calling on the “federal police to refrain from using exit bans in the future”.
