Kurdish footballer shot at on German motorway
▶ Deniz Naki claims he was targeted because he criticised Turkey and supports Kurds
A German-Kurdish footballer who was shot at while driving in Germany on Sunday says he was attacked for criticising the Turkish government and supporting Kurdish separatism.
Deniz Naki, 28, was driving his SUV on a motorway near the town of Duren when unknown assailants fired at him from a black van.
Two bullets hit the car, one smashed a side window and another became lodged in the chassis above the wheel, but he was unhurt.
Naki was driving on in a slow lane at 11pm when the vehicle approached his car from the adjacent lane and the shots were fired, he said.
“I immediately ducked and drove on to the hard shoulder.”
The van drove off and he called the police.
“I could have died, it was close – I was afraid for my life,” Naki, who frequently receives death threats on social media because of his pro-Kurdish stance, told Die Welt newspaper.
“I always knew that something like that could happen. But I never expected it to happen in Germany.”
Naki, who lives in Turkey, said he was targeted because of his criticism of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“I assume it was an MIT [Turkish National Intelligence Organisation] agent or someone else who doesn’t like my political stance,” he said.
“We’re investigating in all directions,” said Katja Schlenkermann-Pitts, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office in Aachen.
“A politically motivated crime cannot be ruled out.”
Some consider Naki an enemy of the Turkish state because of his support for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party – a Kurdish separatist organisation, recognised as a terrorist group by the United States.
In 2016 Naki was charged with inciting hatred and hostility, the case was dropped in November that year.
In April last year he was given an 18-month suspended jail sentence for “terrorist propaganda” in support of the Kurdish group.
Naki captains the third-division club Amed SK in Diyarbakir, the unofficial capital of Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish south-east. Naki and his teammates are revered by Kurds as stars of the Kurdish separatist cause, but they are also reviled by many Turks.
When the team travels for work, crowds chant abuse and hurl objects at them during their matches. Last summer, Naki was physically attacked by a spectator.
Following last year’s suspended sentence and an increase in threatening messages, Naki said he was advised to move back to Germany, where his skills had earned him a place in the national under-21 team and where he played for Hamburg club St Pauli in the Bundesliga.
But the team’s captain said he refused to leave Turkey.
Sahra Wagenknecht, parliamentary leader of the Left party, said that Berlin should now investigate whether
“Turkish death squads are active in Germany”.