Turkey: Munich court must deliver justice to stop stigmatizing Turks

[rick murphy]

http://www.todayszaman.com/news-314575-turkey-munich-court-must-deliver-justice-to-stop-stigmatizing-turks.html

Turkey: Munich court must deliver justice to stop stigmatizing Turks

Picture: Parliament’s Human Rights Investigation Commission head Ayhan
Sefer Üstün (Photo: Today's Zaman, Mevlüt Karabulut)

5 May 2013 /ALİ ASLAN KILIÇ, ANKARA

The Turkish Parliament's Human Rights Investigation Commission head
has stated that the German court looking into a neo-Nazi ring that has
long stigmatized ethnic Turks in Germany must deliver a historic
decision to condemn racism and blatant discrimination targeting some 3
million Turks living in Germany.

“While rendering a punitive decision to offer some sort of closure to
relatives of victims this neo-Nazi terror group had killed, the court
now has the responsibility of making what could be a historic decision
to tackle the racism and discrimination in German society,” Ayhan
Sefer Üstün, the chairman of the commission, said.

In an interview with Today's Zaman on the eve of the first hearing
scheduled for Monday by a Munich court in the trial of a neo-Nazi ring
that is allegedly responsible for the deaths of eight Turks, one Greek
and one policewoman in Germany between 2000 and 2007, Üstün said
German courts have never really addressed the root causes of rampant
racism marginalizing the largest ethnic community in Germany. “Now it
is the time to show that actions by extremist groups like this neo-
Nazi element can't continue with impunity,” he underlined, calling on
the court to deliver a well-reasoned judgment in what is a landmark
case in Germany.

Üstün, accompanied by other deputies, will be attending the first
hearing of the court on Monday, followed by a meeting with the
victims' families as a show of solidarity for ethnic Turks living in
Germany. “From the beginning, we have shown quite an interest in the
investigation of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Underground (NSU)
group whose activities came to a light in November 2011 when two
suspected founders were found dead,” he said.

This visit will be the fourth one to Germany by members of the Turkish
Parliament's Human Rights Investigation Commission. A Munich court
will on Monday start hearing the case involving a key member of the
NSU ring named Beate Zschaepe, who turned herself in after botched
armed robbery in 2011, along with four men alleged to have aided and
abetted the killers.

The court proceedings were delayed after the Higher Regional Court in
Munich restricted access to Turkish and international media using an
obscure accreditation system. The issue was somewhat resolved after
Germany's Constitutional Court intervened with a ruling that foreign
media should have access to the trial. The Munich court came up with a
new pooling system to satisfy huge media interest in the case.

The string of killings of small businessmen, including a florist, a
tailor and fast-food stall owners, went unsolved for years, with
authorities suspecting organized crime or drug trafficking linked to
the victims' relatives rather than politically motivated ethnic and
racist violence to be the motive.

The revelations prompted a public debate in Germany and beyond on the
effectiveness of the German security agencies and whether or not the
neo-Nazi terror group had in fact received assistance from German
intelligence for over a decade. The scandal led to the resignation of
several high-ranking security officials, including the head of
Germany's domestic spy service, over a failure to act on intelligence
and the covering up of evidence by shredding documents.

Üstün said the case shows there is a colossal failure in the German
system, which is usually applauded for working like clockwork without
a single glitch, according to the German officials he met. “I believe
German authorities must acknowledge that there is huge systemic
problem in the country that keeps generating these racist elements,”
he said, adding, “It is difficult to understand how suspects had been
freely roaming the country for more than a decade, robbing banks and
committing murders.”

A German parliamentary commission led by Sebastian Edathy, was
established to investigate the neo-Nazi murders and has already
uncovered several instances where security agencies appeared to hide
what they knew about the group.

The Associated Press reported on Friday that it had obtained an
internal document drawn up in 2007 by police in the southern state of
Baden-Württemberg stating that the likely killer couldn't have come
from Western Europe because "in our culture the killing of human
beings is a grave taboo." The news agency report stated it found the
comment “striking” given that Germany made genocide against Europe's
Jews a matter of state policy in the last century.

Referring to a report issued by the Turkish Parliament's Human Rights
Investigation Commission last year, Üstün said there had been numerous
incidents reported as hate crimes, racist or Islamophobic attacks
targeting Turks in Germany. “This is only the tip of the iceberg
because so many went unreported because Turks feel authorities will
not even look into the matter,” he noted.

He said that if Germany does not tackle the problem of racism and
sticks to denials and defensive posturing, the problem will spread to
other countries in Europe just like many had wrongly tried to appease
Nazi Germany before World War II. “I told German authorities that this
problem, if not addressed, will come back and hurt Germany itself,”
Üstün explained.

The Turkish deputy also asked German politicians to throw their
support behind the neo-Nazi investigations, saying that without
necessary political backing, it will be difficult to get rid of racism
and xenophobia in German bureaucracy and society. Üstün said
intellectuals in German society and media should take the lead in
uncovering reasons for rampant racism in Germany.

A book published in 2010, “Germany Abolishes Itself,” and written by
Thilo Sarrazin, a former central banker who argued that Turkish and
Arab immigrants sponged off the state and threatened Germany's
culture, became a best-seller. The book, which is laden with insults
and stereotypes of Muslims and Sarrazin's claim that Germany's Muslim
community was “intellectually inferior,” created outrage in Germany,
but close to 90 percent of Germans admitted that they found the book
convincing, and 20 percent indicated they would vote for Sarrazin if
he founded a political party.