by Stefan Frank,
- Two German national soccer team players of Turkish origin had a photo-op with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and gave signed club shirts as gifts to him. One of the shirts bore the message (in Turkish): “With respect to my president. Yours faithfully”.
- After the first exit poll, thousands of Turks in German cities took to the streets, honked car horns and waved Turkish and AKP flags, celebrating Erdogan’s election victory until well after midnight.
- “When do you finally realize that the most important requirements for integration are not language and upward mobility, but emotional bonds and identifying with the country in which one lives?” — Hamed Abdel-Samad, German-Egyptian political scientist.
This summer, the German public began to realize that there are hundreds of thousands of Germans of Turkish origin who revere as their leader not German Chancellor Angela Merkel, but Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
In a country where Erdogan is arguably the most-despised foreign leader, this revelation was probably bound to create a dust-up. For years, Erdogan’s human rights violations, his slander against Germany (where he sees “Nazi practices” at work) and the imprisonment in Turkey of German citizens on trumped-up terrorism charges have been regular news in the German media. The fate of German-Turkish journalist Deniz Yücel, arrested by the Turkish police in February 2016, then held in solitary confinement in a Turkish prison for almost a year, has caused as much public outrage in Germany as the imprisonment and subsequent house arrest of Pastor Andrew Brunson has in the United States. Cem Özdemir, a former chairman of Germany’s Green Party — who in 1994 became the first member of the German parliament who had Turkish roots — has called Erdogan a “hostage taker”.
So it was not surprising, shortly before the soccer World Cup, when two German national soccer team players of Turkish origin had a photo-op with Erdogan, that there was a national outcry.
In a meeting at London’s Four Seasons Hotel on May 15, Mesud Özil (Arsenal London) and Ilkay Gündoğan (Manchester City), two midfielders who had been called up by Germany’s coach, Joachim Löw, for the World Cup in Russia, gave signed club shirts as gifts to the Turkish president. The shirt given by Gündoğan — who holds only German citizenship — bore the message (in Turkish): “With respect to my president. Yours faithfully”. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) immediately distributed the pictures through its media channels and used it in its election campaign.
In Germany, the reaction to the “Erdogate” scandal was seismic. Cem Özdemir said:
“The name of the President of a German national team player is Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the Chancellor is Angela Merkel, and the parliament is called Deutscher Bundestag. It is located in Berlin, not in Ankara.”
Reinhard Grindel, president of the German Soccer Association (DFB) said:
“The DFB, of course, respects the special situation of our players with migrant backgrounds, but soccer and the DFB stand for values that Mr. Erdogan does not sufficiently respect. That is why it is not good that our international players let themselves be manipulated for his electoral campaign. In doing that, our players have certainly not helped the DFB’s work on integration.”
Fueling the anger further was Özil’s and Gündoğan’s refusal to admit that the photo-op might have been a mistake, as well as the behavior of high-ranking DFB officials, who tried to explain it away. They cited as excuses the ethnicity of the players (who were both born in Germany) or their “young age” (Gündoğan is 27, Özil is 30).
In the last two test matches ahead of the tournament, German fans booed both Özil and Gündoğan. Some, in a foul against Gündoğan, even cheered.
In an attempt to heal the rift, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier received Özil and Gündoğan in his official residence in Berlin. During a subsequent interview in Die Zeit, however, Steinmeier sadly admitted that the players had not acknowledged any wrongdoing.
DFB director Thomas Bierhoff nevertheless insisted that Özil and Gündoğan were “still good ambassadors for integration”. In 2010, Özil had, in fact, been awarded a “prize for successful integration” by the Hubert Burda Media group, and in 2014, the German president awarded him Germany’s highest sports award, the Silver Laurel Leaf. Özil had been elected Germany’s player of the year five times.