Berlin, Germany. The recent Turkish vote to enable President Erdogan to consolidate power has caused alarm in the west, but nowhere as much as in Germany, where now German politicians are really taking an interest after noticing dual national Turks heavily supported the vote.
Nuclear level shockwaves from the Turkish referendum have reached as far as Germany, where they have set off renewed controversy over the role of the country’s huge Turkish community.
Angela Merkel’s Bavarian sister party have now called for dual citizenship rules to be changed after German Turks voted heavily in favour of expanding President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s powers.
Bavaria’s interior minister, called for a debate on finding a “common future” for the country’s German and Turkish populations. One senior member of the far-Right Alternative for Germany party described German Turks who voted in favour of the reforms as a fifth column and demanded they get the hell out of Germany.
Turkish citizens living in Germany were eligible to vote in the referendum, out of an estimated total population of 4million people of Turkish origin. About one and a half million voted in the Turkish election. This has been greeted with horror in Germany, where the referendum comes amid deeply strained relations with Turkey.
It seems Angela Merkel’s vision of a liberal-democratic new world order Germany is not exactly what her dual national Turkish residents desire. What happens hext will test Germany’s tolerance levels even further.