Following a police raid and suspected Grey Wolf attempted arson attack on a Kurdish Verein (association), The Left Berlin interviews Die Linke politician Ferat Koçak. He was in the community centre at the time of the attack and had previously survived a far-right arson attack on his home in 2018.
On Saturday the 5th of October the police searched the Verein des demokratischen kurdischen Gemeindezentrums Nav Berlin and arrested two people. Why did the police search a Kurdish community centre?
First, the repression against Kurds, especially left-wing Kurds, has been happening for years. As for why here, we don’t yet have that information. I’ve made a parliamentary inquiry about that. But we know that the former mayor of the Kurdish city Ağrı was arrested. He is a board member of the HDP (Peoples’ Democratic Party) so an opposition member who fled to Germany. This highlights that the long arm of Erdoğan’s Turkish regime reaches to Germany, and other European countries, which we’ve seen includes deportations of opposition figures. There was recently a meeting from Annalena Baerbock with Turkish functionaries, and we can assume these things were spoken about, as well as a recent deportation from Berlin to Kurdistan.
At the same time, Germany has promised Turkey weapons exports, and with these weapons, Turkey attacks Rojava in Northern Syria and Northern Iraq, destroying infrastructure and killing people. For example, most recently, two quite well-known Kurdish journalists were killed with a drone. The Turkish army has also invaded Northern Syria and Northern Iraq and set up occupations, and these Turkish military operations, which are contrary to international law, are not criticised by Germany as Turkey’s NATO partner. We shouldn’t forget that Erdoğan holds onto the keys to the door to Europe, stopping people on the move from entering. I believe this repression has a bigger complex that we have to take into account, and it is important that we now clearly stand in solidarity with Kurdish comrades.
What happened during the search?
There was a Hundertschaft [a unit of 80-120 police officers] with machine guns, on a Saturday while families and kids were there. It had been a totally normal community centre day. They took people’s personal details, and then two were arrested, namely the former mayor and a younger person. The whole process took 2 hours, and the two people were held for a total of 4 hours. They were not told why they were arrested. Their fingerprints were taken, and then they were released.
It’s not the first time that Nav Berlin was searched by the police. Is there a longer history of police assaults against the Kurdish community in Berlin?
For many years there’s been attacks and repression, such as people assaulted at peaceful demos, arrests, and so on. We’ve known this since the 1990’s with the PKK ban in Germany. This ban has been used to criminalise and attack left-wing Kurds and opposition figures from Turkey. In 2019, there was a wave of larger police activity with raids, and they took many items, such as laptops, destroyed spaces, broke things, tore down doors, threw things on the floor, and so on.
We consider the most recent attack to be connected to the international week for freedom for Abdullah Öcalan, the ideological head of the Kurdish movement. There are art exhibitions and events about his years-long solitary isolation. Kurdish comrades are trying to bring visibility to this problem, because holding someone in solitary confinement for so long without even allowing his lawyers access to him goes against human rights standards. Naturally, people need to show Turkey’s trading partner and brother in arms that they are standing against it.
The next day, you were in Nav Berlin’s community centre and were speaking with members of the community. What happened then?
Yeah, I was there and spoke with the former mayor to prepare my parliamentary inquiry. As I got up to go pick up some tea, I noticed that someone had poured something on the front window, which smelled exactly like petrol. I turned around because I had already survived one arson attack, so this triggered me. But I also reacted just like in the 2018 arson attack. I turned back around, I yelled “Benzine! It smells like benzine, we have to go out, everyone out!” Inside there were also babies, children, something like 40 or 50 people inside the whole building. We went outside, the person [who poured the petrol] realised that I came out and quickly ran away. They had covered the entire front of the building with petrol, both entrances and the whole window front. It was only only a matter of seconds before they ignited it, then we wouldn’t have come out of the building. It was an attempted arson attack.
I wanted to call the police, but Kurdish comrades didn’t want to because they had experienced the state repression on the previous day. Eventually the police came and took down information. Then Kripo [Kriminalpolizei] came. But just as Nazis feel motivated when their attacks on refugees and migrants are allowed, naturally, Turkish fascists also feel motivated to attack a Kurdish centre when the state has clearly marked itself against the Verein.
Nav Berlin has said that they suspect Grey Wolves were behind the attack. Who are the Grey Wolves, and why do some believe that they were the perpetrators?
We don’t actually have confirmation that they were Grey Wolves, but we assume so because one week ago, there was an attack against a Kurdish cultural Verein in Hamburg-St Pauli. And the repression against Kurdish facilities in Turkey has increased in the last weeks as well.
The Grey Wolves are Turkish fascists who, in the 1970’s, established themselves in Germany. There have been documented attacks. In 2016, the Kreuzberg office the HKP (People’s Liberation Party), Die Linke’s sister-party, was attacked. Currently, the Grey Wolves are organising heavily. We’ve seen a mob of Grey Wolves hunting and attacking Kurdish comrades in Belgium. We see now that they are also organising themselves here in Germany, in order to create a threatening climate for Kurds, Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, and Jews. And still, the Berlin police, LKA or Verfassungsschutz have not been observing this situation. Based on inquiries we’ve sent, we’ve seen that they simply have no idea how dangerous this group is and how they are organising. And it honestly makes me nervous when there’s Turkish fascists on the streets attacking Kurds.
As a left-wing politician with Kurdish roots, alongside Cansu Özdemir in Hamburg or Gökay Akbulut in Baden-Württemberg, we are constantly faced with this threat. This is also true for others in oppositional roles, such as an [Turkish] opposition journalist whose house was stormed in Rudow several years ago, and he was beaten up in front of his family. The danger from the Grey Wolves is constantly growing, and because of that, we as Die Linke are organising an event together with Armenian comrades to address this.
This interview was done in German and translated by the author.
