Concerns shared by Germany, Turkey before vote
COLOGNE, Germany — Both Germans and Turks are concerned as Turkey prepares to vote Sunday in a referendum that could vastly expand the powers of its already authoritarian president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose reach into Germany has become an increasing point of friction.
Since the 1960s, Germany has maintained the largest Turkish diaspora in Europe, now some 3 million people. For many years, Germany was happy to let the Turkish state provide and pay for prayer leaders and other provisions for its emigrants.
But German intelligence agencies and politicians now charge that Mr. Erdogan is using the arrangement to hunt down and punish opponents as he pursues a victory that would make his authority all but unchallengeable. About half the Turks who live in Germany hold Turkish citizenship and are eligible to vote.
The Germans have accused some imams sent by Turkey of spying on Turks living in Germany and of denouncing individuals and institutions critical of the president. Such spying, the Germans said, has allowed the Turkish government to track down, detain and harass their targets’ families and associates back home in Turkey.
In Germany, the spying accusations surfaced in February. Afterward, Turkey’s state religious authority, Diyanet, said it had withdrawn an unspecified number of imams “in order not to damage 40 years of relations.”
Germany’s foreign minister, Sigmar Gabriel, recently held meetings with Turkish community leaders, worrying that 20 to 30 years of “successful work at living together can get broken.”
Mr. Erdogan and his associates hurled charges of Nazism at leaders in Germany and the Netherlands after those countries banned rallies by Turkish ministers ahead of Sunday’s vote.
As it has for years with members or supporters of the outlawed PKK movement for Kurdish independence, Turkey has handed German officials dossiers with the names of more than 300 people in Germany whom Ankara sees as working against Mr. Erdogan’s Turkey.
Allegedly, many of those who were named support the movement of Fethullah Gulen, a former Mr. Erdogan ally now accused of orchestrating last summer’s failed coup in Turkey. Mr. Gulen lives in Pennsylvania.
The dossiers included material obtained by illegal Turkish espionage on German soil, German officials said.
“It is certainly one of the most difficult phases in Turkish-German relations,” said Michelle Muentefering, who heads the Turkey committee in parliament and was named in one of the dossiers.