Response from Berlin

The detention of Ekrem Imamoglu, a contested by the Turkish Presidency for the opposition Republican Party of CHP and elected mayor of Constantinople, also brings about 1.2 million citizens of Turkish -based Turkish people living in Turkish. According to the German Statistical Service in 2023, the number of Turks living in Germany amounted to 1.5 million.

The Turkish community in Germany is, however, divided, because one should not forget that in the 2023 presidential election it had clearly supported Tayyip Erdogan and the Justice and Development Party (AKP). Specifically, Germany’s Turkish voters gave Erdogan the stunning 65%, with Republican Party candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu limited to a low rate of around 33%. Since then this trend does not seem to have been overthrown.

How do Turkish organizations react

However, in Germany there is also an active politically and socially opposition dispersion, as well as a large Kurdish community with serious foundations in German society. In many German cities, from Berlin to Cologne, there were demonstrations against the arrest (now officially detention) in recent days with the slogan: “Freedom and Justice for Ekrem Imoglou”.

Turkish organizations that are in the Republican Party and operating in Germany are calling on the Turks of Germany on solidarity marches for Ekrem Imamoglou next time. “It is important to be united for the law and for an independent justice,” Dillek Delikan Durzun, from the CHP party organization in Germany, told the ZDF network.

At the same time, however, there are the Turks of Germany who take to the streets in favor of Erdogan and against Imamoglou. “The law is law. If one has violated the law, they must be punished, ”the Turks in Cologne said in a demonstration, according to the ZDF.

In the same report, Kaner Aver, a researcher at the German Center for Turkish Studies and Research of Social Integration, believes that mobilizations in Germany will not affect Erdogan’s decision -making. For the researcher it is more important to exert political pressure from the European Union. At the same time, as the expert points out, Erdogan knows that Europe is trying to change sailing in its security architecture lately, and that Brussels is well aware that Turkey is the country with the second most powerful troops in NATO.

Careful political reactions

In the meantime, there have yet to be reactions to a high political level in Germany for today’s Imamoglou decision to protect corruption, but a wave of solidarity has been recorded in recent days.

Members of Turkish descent, such as Minister of Education, Jam Ezdemir, from the Greens or the Turkish Nahabuur of the Social Democrats, a human rights specialist and head of the German-Cyprus parliamentary group, are on his side.

The arrest of Imamoglou had been condemned by the previous days by both the Chancellor Olaf Saltz from Brussels, as well as the head of the Christian Democrats and probably the next Chancellor Friedrich Mertz, as well as the Foreign Minister.