Disappointed by traditional German politics, ethnic-Turkish candidates have formed their own party 

BERLIN

As Germany’s federal elections draw closer, a new party -- recently formed by ethnic-Turkish citizens -- is hoping to make a breakthrough into national politics.

The Alliance of German Democrats (AD-D) won 14,000 votes in May’s regional election in the northern state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Although it has little chance of getting close to Germany’s five percent electoral threshold in Sunday’s federal contest, they still view it as an opportunity to give a strong message to the traditional parties.

“We are not professional politicians, but ordinary citizens who are frustrated with growing anti-Turkish sentiment in Germany in recent years,” AD-D’s co-founder and secretary general Halil Ertem tells Anadolu Agency.

"In the federal elections on Sunday, we are hoping to significantly increase our support. But our real work will start on Monday. Our primary goal will be to win seats at the European Parliament elections in 2019,” he says.

According to Ertem, AD-D has a good chance of winning several seats at the European Parliament elections, as there will be no threshold and nearly 180,000 votes would be enough for a candidate to be elected.

Among the three million people with Turkish roots in Germany, half of them have German citizenship. Approximately 800,000 ethnic-Turkish citizens are eligible to vote, according to estimates.

Erdogan posters

Although Turkish immigrants were less interested in German elections in previous years, recent political tensions between Berlin and Ankara has increased their interest in the federal elections.

Ertem says their party received greater attention among Turkish immigrants in recent days, after it decided to use posters of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in its election campaign.

Erdogan, an outspoken critic of Germany’s illiberal integration policies, has also been a very popular figure among a majority of Turkish immigrants.

The Turkish president last week criticized Germany’s mainstream parties for adopting anti-Turkish rhetoric,and has called on his countryman to back parties who were not hostile to Turkey.

“We love President Erdogan and we respect him,” Ertem says, but also underlined that their party AD-D had no ties with any political party in Turkey and remained open to all Turkish immigrants, who shared their principles.

“We have had no discussions with any Turkish official, and received no support from Turkey, neither during the foundation of our party last year, nor during our planning work for our campaign ahead of the federal elections,” he stresses.

Against mainstream parties

AD-D was founded in August 2016, a few weeks after the German parliament’s controversial motion which described the deaths of Ottoman Armenians in 1915 as “genocide”.

Ertem said the one-sided motion, which neglected suffering on the Turkish side, caused uproar among the members of the Turkish community.

“None of the 11 ethnic-Turkish lawmakers from the mainstream parties opposed this motion. Just for the sake of their political career, they couldn’t dare to contradict their party line,” he said.

Ertem argued that mainstream parties have so far failed to address the real concerns of the immigrant population, and did not take serious measures against growing racism and discrimination against German citizens with an immigrant background.

He accused them of adopting anti-Turkey, anti-Erdogan rhetoric.

“After all that, we have said enough is enough and decided to found our party, the Alliance of German Democrats,” he said.

AD-D is not the first party founded by immigrants in Germany.

In 2010, a group of migrants led by ethnic-Turkish citizens, founded the Alliance for Innovation and Justice (BIG).

However, the party could not get more than 18,000 votes in federal elections in 2013.

BIG decided to boycott the federal elections this year, in order to protest mainstream parties, which it accused of becoming anti-Turkish and drifting into populism.

Rise of the far-right

Germany has witnessed growing racism in recent years, triggered by the propaganda of far-right parties which have effectively used the Internet to disseminate extremist views and fake news on the refugee crisis.

The rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which was polled at around 10 percent in recent polls, has been a widespread concern.

In 2013, AfD failed to pass the five percent threshold and could not enter the Bundestag, the German parliament.

Since the refugee crisis in 2015, the party adopted an explicit anti-immigrant as well as anti-Islamic rhetoric and significantly increased its support.

In a recent poll released by the GMS institute on Thursday, AfD came in at 10 percent.

The poll put Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic bloc at 37 percent, while the Social Democratic Party (SPD) polled at 22 percent.

Germany, a country of 81.8 million people, has the second-largest Muslim population in Western Europe after France.

Among the country’s nearly 4.7 million Muslims, three million are of Turkish origin. Many of them migrated to Germany in the 1960s.