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WSWS : News & Analysis : Europe : Germany
German government bans Turkish Islamic group
By Justus Leicht
19 December 2001
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On December 12, the Interior Ministry banned the Turkish Islamic
group Kalifatsstaat (Caliphate State), along with 20 subsidiary
organisations. The ban was imposed on what is officially called the
�Federation of Islamic Associations and Communities� (ICCB),
previously a legally registered voluntary society. The proscription
comes only days after the introduction of changes to the law relating
to voluntary societies and groups following specific religious or
ideological aims, making their prohibition far easier.
The September 11 terrorist attacks have served only as a pretext for
this clampdown on democratic rights. Social Democratic Interior
Minister Otto Schily has referred to the fact that he had already
introduced plans to change the law on September 5, citing the ICCB as
a prime example of �extremist associations, which camouflage
themselves as religious or ideological groups�.
In the early morning hours, massive numbers of police were marshalled to search over
200 ICCB buildings and the private dwellings of its members, seizing all property
belonging to the association. In the state of Baden Wu
erttemberg alone, 600 officers participated in the action. In Cologne, where the
association had its head offices, several hundred police took part in the searches.
Police officers trampled through several mosques run by the association. To enter a
mosque without first removing one�s shoes is regarded as an insult to the Islamic
faith. Sniffer dogs were also used. Although the media
and government had presented the association as a highly dangerous nest of criminals
and terrorist activities, there were relatively few arrests.
The same day, Interior Minister Otto Schily announced that ICCB leader Metin Kaplan,
presently serving a four-year prison sentence, would be deported to Turkey on his
release. Kaplan has already been served with his depor
tation papers. It was because he feared being expelled to Turkey that Kaplan had
chosen to serve his sentence in jail rather than on probation.
Most of the ICCB�s 1,100 members and supporters, who have not been found guilty of any
crime, are threatened with deportation. Edmund Stoiber, chairman of the Bavarian
Christian Democratic Union (CSU), called this the �ac
id test� of the federal government�s policies, making CSU agreement to Schily�s
so-called Anti-terrorist Package II in the Bundesrat (Upper House of Parliament)
dependent upon it.
Groundless reasoning
On closer scrutiny, the reasons for prohibiting the ICCB given by Schily and the
Office for the Protection of the Constitution (as Germany�s domestic secret service is
called), and uncritically parroted by the mass media,
have proved to be completely groundless.
Schily strongly emphasised the hostility to democracy evinced by the Kalifatsstaat.
The ICCB is unarguably an extreme rightwing, anti-democratic organisation, which
states, �Islam and democracy are incompatible�. However,
anti-democratic convictions alone do not justify the state suppression of an
organisation. Even the rightwing political spokesman of the Green Party, Volker Beck,
who supports Schily�s law changes and the prohibition of
the Kaplan group, admitted, �Christian groups like the Jehovah�s Witnesses or Opus Dei
[an ultra-conservative Catholic organisation] express convictions that are
incompatible with the view of human rights and society in t
he [German] constitution�. According to Beck, such convictions �must be tolerated, as
long as they do not seek to impose them with illegal means�.
In his press statement, Schily adds that the Kalifatsstaat is directed �against the
concept of international understanding�, citing the following reason: It undertakes
�agitation against Turkey, Israel and other states, a
s well as against Jews�.
The first part of this argument is an open attack on the freedom of opinion. The
repressive character of the state in Turkey and Israel is well known. The suppression
of the Kurds and the Palestinians contradicts fundamen
tal democratic principles, internationally recognised legal standards and numerous UN
resolutions. If �agitation� against these states is a reason for prohibiting
organisations and deporting activists, the same could be a
pplied to any political criticism of regimes that are allied with Germany, regardless
of how bloodstained they are.
The second part of the argument is no better. Stirring up hatred against Jews or other
minorities can be punished easily using the existing criminal and civil law, where
there is evidence of slander, incitement to race ha
tred or incitement of others to commit criminal offences. The state, or anyone
affected, could have easily launched judicial proceedings against functionaries of the
Kaplan group, which has been under intensive observatio
n for many years. In fact, the group largely escaped such legal proceedings in the
past.
This could only be for two reasons. Either there was insufficient evidence, which
could have withstood judicial examination, or the authorities consciously gave the
group a free hand, because it provided them with the nec
essary pretext to tighten up the laws relating to voluntary associations.
Several things point to the latter, not least the fact that even the murder of those
associated with the ICCB remained unsolved and the state appeared quite uninterested,
even though there would not have been any lack of
legal possibilities for mounting police and judicial procedures against individual
members of the group. Today�s claims sound even more hollow: the bizarre Kaplan sect,
which until recently has constantly lost members, po
ses �a danger to internal security�.
The authorities only seemed interested in one case, which is now constantly cited by
Schily and the media: In 1996, after a split in the federation, Kaplan had issued a
Fatwa (a legal judgement pronounced by an Islamic sc
holar) against a rival second Caliph, Halil Ibrahim Sofu. Ten months later, an unknown
death squad shot Sofu. Kaplan was accused of �forming a terrorist association� within
the federation, which had as its target �the eli
mination of critics and deviationists, as well as directing fanatical supporters to
launch attacks inside Turkey�. The only proof of incitement to murder was Kaplan�s
Fatwa, which was then supposedly put into practice by
individual member of the group, possibly without his knowledge.
In 1998, the Turkish police claimed that they had prevented an assassination attempt
by the Kaplan group at the last minute. During the national holiday, a suicide killer
had wanted to fly a plane into the Ataturk-Mausole
um. It was only bad weather that meant the attack was postponed. Embarrassingly, on
this day, there was no wind and sunshine prevailed throughout the country, as the
Suedeutsche Zeitung reported at the time. The fact that
the whole affair was a fabrication of the Turkish secret services, however, hardly
prevented a single German newspaper from presenting the story as true, or at least
credible.
Der Spiegel newsweekly dug up the fact that in 1989, Cemaleddin Kaplan, the father of
the current Caliph and founder of the ICCB, had supported the call by Ayatollah
Khomeini to kill the writer Salman Rushdie. However, th
e article intentionally suppressed the fact that Kaplan had clearly dissociated
himself from the implementation of the murder. According to ethnology professor Werner
Schiffauer, who testified as an expert witness against
Metin Kaplan, this claim had been made by a group of splitters.
In their efforts to present the activities of the Kaplan group as terrorist, and thus
be better able to justify a prohibition, the media magnified the importance of yet
another case: On October 17, Harun Aydin, the publis
her of the ICCB�s newspaper and the husband of Kaplan�s sister-in-law, was arrested at
Frankfurt airport. The border police recorded the seizure of an
Atomic-Biological-Chemical warfare protection suit, materials for the
production of an explosive fuse and a farewell letter, among other things.
The next day, an arrest warrant was issued, and the day after that Chief Federal
Prosecutor Kay Nehm took over the case, assigning the Federal Criminal Office to
investigate the articles it had seized and to conduct a sea
rch of Aydin�s house. The media excitedly reported the arrest of a �sleeper� and a
�suicide killer�. But it then emerged that the protective suit was simply a raincoat,
the fuse was a talisman and the farewell communicati
on a love letter. Aydin had to be released, but most of the media were barely
interested in this. Characteristically, Schily did not mention this embarrassing story
as part of his grounds for the prohibition, and the majo
rity of the media also intentionally omitted to mention it.
Instead, in order to create some link between the ICCB and terrorism, some newspapers
reported secret service findings, according to which representatives of the
organisation had met with the Taliban and Osama bin Laden.
In fact, the ICCB newspaper had reported in 1997 that the year before a delegation had
gone to Afghanistan and held talks with the Taliban, also meeting bin Laden. It should
be noted that in 1996 and 1997 representatives
of the American oil company Unocal and the US State Department had also met and
negotiated with the Taliban. At this time, the US was not making any public demands
for bin Laden to be apprehended.
In 1998, a senior Taliban representative attended a public meeting of the
Kalifatsstaat. But at this time there were not even any UN sanctions against the
Afghan regime. No concrete cooperation developed from this series
of meetings, such as military training, which even the secret service has admitted.
The real reasons
The banning of the Kalifatsstaat and the threat to deport Kaplan has nothing to do
with the �fight against terrorism� or the �defence of democracy and international
understanding�. Rather, a precedent is being established
for the government to be able to take action against every deviating opinion and
opposition current.
Resting on the now tougher laws relating to voluntary associations, the interior
ministry has trampled upon democratic rights in a manner that would never have been
possible in the context of normal legal procedures. In b
anning the Kalifatsstaat, which took place without legal proceedings on the order of
the interior minister, not only was the organisation dissolved, but its assets and
those of numerous members were also seized. For examp
le, the police removed all documents, books and magazines from the home of Harun
Aydin, who is regarded as Kaplan�s deputy, his lawyer reported. Cars parked outside
the group�s Cologne centre were towed away.
Far worse than the loss of their property are the consequences of deportation, which
threatens numerous members of the group as a result of the ban. If sent to Turkey,
they can count on many years� detention, torture or e
ven losing their life.
Moreover, Schily made clear that the ban is a form of intimidation and in particular
is aimed at Muslims living in Germany. The actions taken against the Kalifatsstaat
should be understood as a warning to other extremist
groups, he said. In his press statement, Schily appealed, with a clearly threatening
undertone, to �law-abiding followers of Islam in our country�: �they must also make it
clear that Islamic extremism and terrorism have n
othing to do with exercising their religion, but are criminal activities.�
Schily openly pointed to a further aspect of the actions taken against the Kaplan
sect. It endangers �substantial interests of the Federal Republic of
Germany�especially with regard to foreign policy�. For a long time, Tu
rkey has called on the European Union to ban exile groups active in their countries
and to deport the leaders back to Ankara.
At the same time, Schily announced he would look at further bans of radical-Islamic
associations. Although he mentioned no names, one group that has come up in
discussions again and again is Milli Goerues (Religious-Natio
nal View), from which the ICCB originally split away. It is said to have about 30,000
members and control over 400 mosques, as well as more than 1,000 subordinate
associations. In many large German cities it has considera
ble influence in Turkish working class districts.
A further reason for banning the ICCB is the implementation of the Safety Package II�.
The Christian Democrats made their agreement in the Bundesrat dependent upon on the
proceedings against the Kaplan group, among other
things, and have now signalled that they will allow the new law to pass. This by no
means signifies that the rightwing of the Christian Democrats are satisfied, as their
continuing diatribes against immigrants and refugee
s shows.
The Safety Package II contains a whole number of measures tightening up the law and
restricting democratic rights. Under the new regulations, foreigners could be expelled
for belonging to �groups prepared to use violence�
or for �supporting terrorist associations�.
Even under the existing laws, those entitled to asylum (like Kaplan, whose right was
recognised in 1992) can be expelled under certain conditions. The protections afforded
to recognised asylum seekers can be abrogated if
a �serious� danger exists to public security. This is assumed to be the case for any
offence for which a sentence of more than three years imprisonment is ordered.
According to the Federal Administrative Court, before a r
ecognised refuge can be expelled, it must also be shown that they held office in an
organisation that was �prepared to use violence�. In Schily�s package, this
�office-holder� test is lowered, however. In future, mere mem
bership or �support� for such an organisation is sufficient to ensure deportation.
In order to satisfy the critics, Schily had to promise that no one would be deported
to a country where they could face torture or the death penalty. But the example of
Turkey shows how hollow such assurances are. Despite
all contrary promises by the Turkish government, the death penalty was only recently
enshrined into the constitution. Several human right organisations�such as Amnesty
International, Human Rights Watch and the Turkish hu
man rights association IHD�have submitted reports contradicting official claims and
showing that torture is systematically used in the country�s police stations and
prisons.
If Schily�s proposals become law, then all asylum-seekers, even officially recognised
ones, can be threatened with deportation; since most politically active refugees,
whether Kurds, Tamils, Iranians or Palestinians, face
persecution in their home countries for allegedly supporting �terrorist
organisations�.
Even those immigrants and refugees who have adopted German citizenship are not
completely safe. Although it is still legally unclear whether naturalisation can be
reversed, it is being discussed again. At the beginning of
December, Christian Democratic Union chairwomen Angela Merkel told the Bild
newspaper, foreigners who only adopted German citizenship in order to camouflage their
membership of fundamentalist groups should have their Ger
man passport taken away. This would mean either, for political reasons, that legally
recognised Germans could lose their citizenship, or that citizenship would come in two
classes: one for naturalised foreigners and anoth
er �genuine� form, i.e. those who are German through blood. Both alternatives recall
the attitudes of the Nazi period.
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World Socialist Web Site
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