Hakan Koçak was sentenced to 9 months’ imprisonment due to insulting and threatening the volunteers of the Hizmet Movement in Nürnberg, Germany. The judge also told Kocak long-term advice and explained that Germany is a constitutional state.
About 50 percent of all people leaving Turkey because they feel politically persecuted seek shelter in Germany. In 2018, there were more than 10,000 asylum applications from Turks in Germany. About two-fifths of applicants were issued some form of protection.
German police have removed the Gülen movement, which Ankara designates a terrorist organisation, from its ‘dangerous’ and ‘to be followed’ watch list, Sözcü newspaper reported, citing a domestic security report from the country’s Southwestern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg.
German Ambassador to Turkey Martin Erdmann has said his country’s judiciary does not recognize the Gülen movement as a terrorist organization and that Turkey should present credible evidence of criminal activity to Germany for the extradition of Gülen-linked individuals.
Murat spent six months in a Turkish prison, followed by a considerable time in hiding after his release. As soon as he could, he made good his escape to Germany. As a trained lawyer and legal adviser to an influential association, he had a good life in his home country, living with his family in an upmarket area.
Ali Ünlü, a 42-year-old former police officer who was earlier dismissed from his job as part of the government’s post-coup crackdown, died of heart attack in a refugee camp in Stuttgart, according to media and people with knowledge of the incident.
A group of pro-Erdoğan Turkish Islamists came together in the city of Duisburg, Germany, and protested the schools operated and inter-cultural dialogue activities which have been carried out by the Turkish people who are affiliated with the Gülen movement.
Last year’s failed coup against Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan resulted in a crackdown on scholars and universities, and has divided the nation’s diaspora. Intense polarisation of Turkish diaspora, plus online harassment, means refugee scholars feel they are being watched.
Germany has rejected a formal request from Turkey to freeze assets of members of the network of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen. The German government officially rejected the request at the end of June, telling Ankara there were no legal grounds for Germany’s financial watchdog BaFin to crack down on the Gulen movement and its supporters.
Many, though not all, of the officials are suspected of having links to the Gulen movement accused of plotting the 15 July coup attempt last year. Given the lack of evidence, it seems unlikely that the Turks would be able to provide better evidence to the Germans that these lower-level figures committed any crimes.
Ercan Karakoyun looks twice over his shoulder when he leaves his Berlin home to make sure nobody is following him. The 37-year-old, who is the public face of the Gulen movement in Germany, says he has received several death threats since the aborted overthrow.
German intelligence expert and author Erich Schmidt-Eenboom has said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, not the faith-based Gülen movement, was behind a failed coup attempt in Turkey on July 15, 2016 based on intelligence reports from the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND).