A few weeks ahead of his planned visit to Germany, Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey has accused a German political fund of supporting militant groups acting in Turkey. He meant the Kurdistan Workers’s Party, which is officially recognized by Turkey and many other countries as a terrorist group. Support is provided, according to Erdogan, within projects and credits for Kurdish organizations and municipal entities in the south-east of Turkey, many of which have close ties with the PKK. “They want to split Turkey,” journalists cite Erdogan. “In credit treaties, Germans define which company gets extra payment. By these means money is officially given to the PKK. Germany has been informed about it, but they haven’t reacted,” Erdogan said.
Even though the Turkish prime minister didn’t name a particular German fund, the search circle is not wide. There are four German funds that are close to political parties in Germany and have branches in Turkey - the Konrad Adenauer Fund (Christian Democratic Union), the Friedrich Ebert Fund (Socialist Party of Germany), the Friedrich Nauman Fund (Party of Free Democrats) and the Heinrich Böll Fund (Greens). The fact that the laws of Germany presuppose all parties are financed by the state budget directly, i.e. the Bundestag, which works via money from German taxpayers, spices the accusation by the Turkish prime minister. The listed funds have branches in various countries and implement many projects in them. The German newspaper Der Spiegel considers that Erdogan meant the Friedrich Ebert Fund.
However, representatives of funds in Germany began rejecting the accusations unanimously. They refer to their internal rules, which forbid giving credits. Moreover, Erdogan didn’t name any specific fund, which enables all of them to say that the accusation doesn’t refer to them.
Nevertheless, the accusation by Erdogan is very serious. Perhaps that is why, the next day, the Turkish prime minister stated that he was misquoted. The Turkish newspaper Milliyet considered that the prime minister meant not a fund, but German development aid organizations. In this case, the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ) and the German group of banks KfW fall under suspicion. The point is GIZ and KfW are directly connected with the German government too, and the risk of a diplomatic row remains.
Both in Turkey and Germany the media are actively discussing the topic, giving the floor to representatives of those accused of the destruction activity of German funds. The head of the Heinrich Böll Fund, Ralf Fuks, who is one of the main suspects according to Turkish newspapers, reacted to the accusation sharply and said it’s unreasonable. “It is not German funds that split Turkey, but the policy of the country, which leads to clashes between Kurds and Turks,” Fuks noted, and reminded about the arrests of Kurdish representatives of civil society and democratically-elected burgomasters. Michael Meier, the head of the Friedrich Ebert Fund in Istanbul, said to Die Welt Online that the Berlin government should interfere in this issue, as the accusation is addressed to the Bundestag. Both Fuks and Meier believe that Erdogan decided to launch an attack on the opposition, first of all, the People's Republican Party and the Kurdistan Party of Peace and Democracy. He called them allies of German funds. The People's Republican Party is preparing to sue Erdogan.
Furthermore, the German foreign ministry has already reacted to the statement of Erdogan. It said that the PKK is classified in Germany and the EU as a militant group. Information on illegal activity will be investigated. German funds have already faced problems with Turkey. In 2002 staff of all four German funds in Turkey were accused of spying, although they were found not guilty.
What the result of the current row will be, nobody knows. But it is no secret that those who are recognized in Turkey as militants, many in Europe call human rights activists, political prisoners and so on. Perhaps, because the militants of the PKK commit terrorist attacks in Ankara and Istanbul, and not in Berlin and Hamburg.
Orkhan Sattarov, the head of the VK European bureau
