As part of Turkish President Erdogan’s plan to restore the Ottoman Empire, he has embarked on a worldwide campaign of terror, attacking Turkish nationals living abroad or Turkish immigrants to foreign nations who speak out against Erdogan’s tyranny. In America, Erdogan’s thugs attacked protesters in Washington, D.C. and a year later all charges were dropped against the attackers.
A similar story is repeating in Germany right now, where and article from Der Zeit exposes how Erdogan is funding gangs and thugs to intimidate, harass, and physically attack people in Turkey who criticize Erdogan and his menacing ways:
He should keep quiet now. Do not say why he is driven through Berlin in an armored car. Or why five bodyguards take care of him. Because with everything he tells, he could endanger his life even more.
Hayko Bagdat, 41, has come to a café on the outskirts of Berlin’s government district. He looks nervous, his movements are erratic. When he tries to turn a cigarette, it falls apart twice, the tobacco spreads on the table. They have been used by professional killers, says Bağdat. Why does he want to talk anyway? Because the German public must know what dangers you are exposed as a critic of the Turkish President Erdoğan.
Bağdat is a journalist, author and cabaret artist. In Turkey, he wrote for the government-critical online newspaper Diken . In the summer of 2016, after the coup attempt against Erdoğan, he fled to Germany, like so many oppositionists and academics. If he had stayed in Turkey, he says, he would have been in prison long ago. In Berlin, however , Hayko Bağdat was finally able to write again and perform publicly. Until the day last December when he learned he was going to be killed.
A Turkish MP of the opposition party HDP has warned him, Bağdat tells in the café: his name is on a death list of the government. As well as the names of other Erdoğan opponents living in Germany. Since then, Hayko Bagdat has been under police protection. When he publicly performed his comedy program that evening in December, he wore a bulletproof vest. She had missed the police. But he certainly did not feel right, says Bağdat: “I thought all the time, if the assassin really means serious, he can just aim my head.”
Like a dark shadow, the constant threat hangs over Hayko Bagdat. Who casts exactly this shadow can not be finally named. But there are many indications that he reaches from Ankara to Germany.
Bağdat’s colleague Can Dündar, former editor-in-chief of the Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet and current ZEIT columnist, also has personal protection in his Berlin exile. When he leaves his home, six civil servants follow him. He no longer drives a taxi since he was insulted and threatened by Turkish-born drivers. On Turkish television, it was openly talked about whether it would be better to have Dündar killed by agents abroad.
Already since 2016, the Green politician Cem Özdemir is under police protection. He received death threats after he voted in the Bundestag to recognize the Armenian genocide.
Leftist politician Hakan Taş from Berlin was attacked by an unknown man on the streets last December, insulted in Turkish as a “son of a bitch” and “traitor to the fatherland” and slapped in the face. Taş suffered a laceration, bleeding on the head. The man fled. As a member of the Berlin House of Representatives Taş had criticized the anti-democratic developments in Turkey under Erdoğan.
And Memet Kılıç, a lawyer and former member of the Bundestag of the Greens from Heidelberg, says that now, every time before he gets into his car, he checks whether the screws on the wheels are still tight. Kılıç had a Kurd, who was mayor in Turkey and then fled to Germany, advised in its asylum application. Afterwards, somebody wrote that he had watched “the little kılıç” in front of his school. The stranger also gave the name of the street where the school of Kılıç’s son is located. Kılıç regularly receives threats via e-mail and from social networks.
All these people live in Germany and still can not feel safe – because they criticize the Turkish government. “It’s an unbearable condition,” Özdemir says. “How can it be that citizens of Turkish origin are threatened or intimidated in this country? In Germany there are parallel structures of a foreign state, about which one knows in the security authorities far too little.”
Not only celebrities must fear for their lives, even ordinary citizens. A growing nationalist-Turkish scene is putting pressure on dissenters. Apparently, the government in Ankara also uses the structures of the Turkish community in Germany to threaten its critics.
An important role is played by a group of Turkish-born rockers: the Ottomans Germania . Outwardly, the Ottomans present themselves as a boxing club. In videos on YouTube, they pretend to get young people off the streets. In fact, they’re recruiting new members for their businesses: drug and weapon trafficking. The State Office for Criminal Investigation Baden-Württemberg estimates that there are currently 400 Ottomans throughout Germany, most of them in the regions of Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Wuppertal. “The Ottomans are not just a criminal organization, they work in the interests of the Turkish government,” says Sebastian Fiedler, chairman of the Federal German Detective Agency in North Rhine-Westphalia. There are both concrete communication and cash flows between Ankara and the Ottomans.
Since the end of March, eight members of the Turkish nationalist rocker group have been tried in Stuttgart . It’s about attempted murder, attempted manslaughter, dangerous assault, pimping, gun and drug offenses, predatory extortion and deprivation of liberty. Among the defendants is Mehmet Bağcı, the former boss of the Ottomans, who called himself “World President”. He is accused of, among other things, predatory extortion. All defendants reject the allegations.
The rockers are not in a political context in court. But closer contact between the Ottomans and the government in Ankara is indicated by a wealth of evidence collected by the state police departments in Baden-Württemberg, Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia. On one of these photos the Erdoğan advisor Ilnur Cevik is photographed, on another picture from April 2016 Bağcı is seen with the AKP member Metin Külünk.
Külünk is a key figure in the national Turkish network on German soil. He is not only a longtime companion of Erdogan – but also a representative of the Turkish government for the interests of the Turks in Germany. Bağcı, the rock boss, flew more frequently to Turkey and met there with Külünk. The Federal Ministry of the Interior confirms the contact. In addition, it has come at least in one case to a financial support of the Ottomans by state Turkish authorities, it is said.(source)
Erdogan’s thuggery is not limited to just Turkey, when he orchestrated a coup against his own government to justify purging his own government and consolidating his power. It’s not an isolated incident when Erdogan’s thugs attack people in the USA and the US government allows him to with impunity and then he goes and has it done in Germany too.
Turkey is returning as a world power to be reckoned with, and she is doing so with the consent and assistance of other nations. She is not merely rising, but being promoted and aided in her rise.
As we have said before, keep your eyes on Turkey because she is the real threat.
As regards to Germany and Turkish influence there, remember that Germany and Turkey are historical allies and even allies today. Germany is not simply being “run over” by Turkey, but is doing this to aid the rise of Turkey because she wants Turkey to return in the same manner that the US government rebuilt the Turkish military for her.