Germany: Turkish community calls for domestic intelligence office to be disbanded

The Turkish community in Germany is demanding that the federal domestic intelligence body (the BfV, or Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution) be disbanded for its failure to prevent a series of murders committed by neo-Nazis. The Associated Press reports that the Turkish community believes the security agency uses a racist mode of reasoning.   

The head of the three-million strong Turkish community in Germany, Kenan Kolat, said the BfV not only has not been arresting racists, but that prejudice against immigrants is deeply rooted in the organization and reflected in its work. Last week a German parliamentary commission said that the procedures undertaken by police, secret services and justice authorities to clarify crimes committed by the neo-Nazi National Socialist Underground (NSU) group constituted an unprecedented, historical failure of the German security apparatus.   

For more than 10 years the authorities failed to recognize that various murders of immigrants were all being committed by the NSU. Kolat called for the BfV to be disbanded and replaced with a new agency with entirely new staff.

"We need a new body, with new staff. Because all of those who were in power at the time are still there. The structures have not changed, there has been no self-purging," Kolat said at a news conference in Berlin earlier this week.

"It is not just about people who are racist. It is about mentalities. ‘Turks are like this – Arabs are like this, the French, the Poles, the Russians, the Russian mafia’," he added.

Among other crimes, at least 10 murders committed all over Germany between 2000 and 2007, mostly of Turkish immigrants, have now been attributed to the NSU. Beate Zschäpe, the only NSU member still living, as well as four alleged NSU supporters, have been on trial in Munich since May.

The trial should last at least until the end of next year. Zschäpe faces life in prison if convicted.