Turkey’s ruling party has huge popularity in Germany

When thousands of people gathered in support of Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on Sunday, the flags waved were Turkish but the backdrop was quintessentially German: the Gothic spires of the cathedral in Cologne.

Last month's failed military coup in Turkey has sent ripples far beyond its border. But probably nowhere more than in Germany, the destination for millions of Turkish immigrants over the past decades and a European foothold for many backers of Erdogan and his political party.

In the last Turkish elections in November, 60.8 percent of Turkish immigrants living in Cologne voted for Erdogan's Justice and Development (AKP) party — a higher proportion of support than in the overall results in Turkey, according to numbers provided by the Turkish newspaper Daily Sabah.

Many Turks living abroad in Germany are still eligible to vote in Turkish elections, which has led to strange scenes in the past as candidates took their campaigns to the streets of a country about 1,200 miles away from Istanbul.

Ahead of the presidential election in 2014, for instance, Erdogan visited Germany to hold a rally speech in front of tens of thousands of supporters. Last weekend, amid rumors that Erdogan would speak to the crowd via live stream, a German court preemptively issued an order blocking a possible feed.

For the governing AKP party, allowing emigrants to vote abroad has paid off in the past: Almost 60 percent of all Turkish-German voters supported the party last November. There are roughly 3 million Turkish immigrants living in Germany, and half of them still have Turkish citizenship.

But as tensions between Germans and some Turkish-German immigrants have grown, there are fears that Erdogan might try to use his political influence to boost his reach in European affairs.

In the 1960s, German politicians began to host Turkish citizens as "guest workers" amid a severe labor shortage. Those Turkish workers were supposed to provide a temporary solution, but many of them never left.

Despite initial resentments in Germany, the German-Turkish community was considered to have adapted well into German society. But, more recently, there have been signs that the Turkish woes are increasingly playing out in Germany.

In March this year, 36 ethnic Kurds were arrested by authorities after they attacked a demonstration of Turkish protesters in Aschaffenburg in Bavaria. Days later, hundreds of German-Turkish protesters demonstrated against "terrorism by the Islamic State and the Kurdistan Workers' Party" — a reference to the outlawed Kurdish faction that has waged a fight for greater autonomy in Turkey for decades.

In recent weeks, clashes were also reported between Erdogan supporters and opponents in Germany.

"The inner-Turkish tensions between nationalists and Kurds, as well as between Erdogan-supporters and opponents must not play out in Germany," governmental commissioner for integration, Aydan Özoguz, was quoted as saying following the coup attempt last month.

Erdogan urged Turkish immigrants in the country to uphold their political or cultural habits, saying at a campaign event in 2014: "Integration yes, assimilation no."

That advice ran contrary to what German Chancellor Angela Merkel had advised Turkish immigrants. Last December, Merkel said the concept of multiculturalism had failed.

"Multiculturalism leads to parallel societies and therefore remains a 'life lie,' " Merkel said.

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Home to 3 million Turkish immigrants, Germany fears rising tensions

Source: Turkey's ruling party has huge popularity in Germany