According to a report by Deutsche Welle (DW) Turkish, the majority of recent asylum application by Turkish citizens in Germany consists of those made by the Kurds, and a great part of these have been rejected by German authorities.
The issue was brought into attention as Clara Bünger, MP for the Left (die Linke), submitted a parliamentary question in Bundestag on the cases of deportation of Kurdish asylum seekers.
A total of 2,979 asylum applications were made in the first quarter of 2022, and 2,328, or 78% of the applicants, stated that they were Kurdish, DW Turkish reported.
In 2021, 57% of the applicants from Turkey, 4,522 out of 7,873, were Kurdish.
In the three years that followed the military coup attempt in 2016 in Turkey, the Kurds constituted less than 50 percent of the Turkish citizens who applied for asylum in Germany.
The Kurdish applicants appear to be subjected to a discrimination by German authorities, as their applications were accepted in much lower rates than non-Kurdish Turkish citizens.
In 2017, while over 28% of applications by Turkish citizens were accepted, merely 11.5% of those made by Kurds were accepted.
In 2018, the rates of acceptance were 41.4 and 12.6, respectively.
In 2019, the rates were 47.4 and 14.5.
In 2020, they were 43 and 12.9; in 2021, 37.2 and 10.7. German authorities accepted 73.6% of the applications made by those who stated that they were ‘Turkish’ in 2021; an almost seven fold acceptance rate compared to the 10.7% acceptance for the Kurds.
In the first quarter of 2022, while 34.1% of the applications by all Turkish citizens were accepted, the acceptance rate was 11.5 regarding applications by Kurds.
