They each got their personal photo of the Turkish president: Kemal Ergün, the chairman of the Islamic Community Milli Görüs based in Cologne, his colleague from the Turkish religious umbrella organisation Ditib, Kazim Türkmen, Durmus Yildirim, head of the far-right Grey Wolves umbrella organisation Atib – and Köksal Kus, new chairman of the European AKP lobby organisation UID.

All of them and other representatives of German-Turkish organisations were invited to Ankara this week and were welcomed by Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Turkish Defence Minister Hulusai Akar. Photos of the meeting were disseminated by the Turkish government on the internet. The content of the talks was not made public.

Nevertheless, the politically explosive trip reveals a lot about the efforts of the Turkish ruling party AKP to influence the Turkish community in Germany. This is what Burak Copur, a researcher on Turkey and political scientist based in Essen, believes.

In an interview with the newspaper WELT, Copur emphasised the “remarkable timing” of the delegation’s trip. It coincides with a time of intense discussion in Germany about the Grey Wolves and the AKP lobby organisation UID. The pressure on the organisations is currently increasing, Copur states. The meeting in Ankara is therefore a “call for help to Erdogan”.

For years, experts have pointed to the close ties of the participating organisations to the Turkish government. Erdogan’s meeting with representatives of UID, Ditib, Milli Görüs, Atib, the business association Müsiad and the Federation of Turkish Democratic Idealist Associations in Germany (ADÜTDF), which is also part of the Grey Wolves movement, has a “new dimension”. All the organisations and institutions that are important in the AKP’s network are involved. Apparently, they had come to the conclusion that “a common strategy” was needed.

Apparently, the organisations are looking for a way out of the crisis. German politicians have recently spoken more clearly regarding the activities of AKP-affiliated lobby groups and Turkish nationalists. During the visit of the German delegation, Mustafa Sentop, Speaker of the Turkish Parliament, said: “It is important that we jointly oppose the attacks on our country, our flag, our citizens and our state property within the framework of the law.

Last November, the German Parliament approved a motion by the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU), the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Free Democratic Party (FDP) and the Green Party (Greens), which called on the federal government to consider banning the Grey Wolf associations. However, high legal hurdles have prevented this so far. A study commissioned by the American Jewish Committee in Berlin has just put the number of members of the nationalist movement at just under 18,500. This means that the group remains the most powerful right-wing extremist organisation in Germany. The report on the protection of the constitution for 2019 states: “The different forms include classical racism as well as the fringes of Islamism”.

The German government describes the UID as a lobbying association supervised by AKP functionaries, which tries to “influence the political decision-making process in Germany in favour of the AKP”. Criticism of the Islamic associations Ditib and Milli Görüs also continues.

Copur expects a reaction from Ankara to the increasingly critical words. “We have to fear,” warns the political scientist, “that the meeting was also about how to deal with Erdogan critics in Germany in the future”.

ADÜTDF President Sentürk Dogruyol also posted a photo on social media showing a meeting with the leader of the far-right Turkish party MHP Devlet Bahceli. Copur is concerned about the picture: “To all appearances, files were exchanged there. We have to expect that these talks will have repercussions in Germany.” The meeting of the participants with Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar also catches the eye, he says. What are associations that also indirectly sit at the table at the Islam Conference looking for with the Turkish defence minister?” asks Copur.

Atib is the largest member organisation of the Central Council of Muslims, which in turn is a member of the German state Islam Conference. In the latest report of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Atib is said to have an ideology “which represents an exaltation of Turkishness and is characterised by a pronounced thinking in terms of friend and foe, which leads to systematic devaluation of other ethnic groups or religions, in particular the Kurds and Judaism”.

Expert Copur therefore takes the Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI) to task. “The BMI must ask itself how it can be that a right-wing extremist organisation like the Atib is allowed to be involved in the Islam Conference in Germany while it is making politics in Turkey alongside Erdogan,” criticises Copur.

https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article230775615/Ditib-UID-Graue-Woelfe-Gipfeltreffen-der-Erdogan-Lobby-in-Ankara.html

The controversial Salzburg political scientist Farid Hafez was the subject of discussion in the European Parliament this week. A motion for a resolution by German Member of the European Parliament Markus Pieper ( Christian Democratic Union, CDU) laments that “Hafez has repeatedly received funding from the EU budget despite being closely associated with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Turkish government, which seek to silence independent journalists and media freedom under the pretext of Islamophobia”.

The motion, adopted by a two-thirds majority, calls on the EU Commission to “amend the eligibility criteria for the ‘Rights, Equality and Citizenship’ programme under the EU budget to prevent individuals and organisations with such alarming views from receiving EU funding”.

Hafez’s EU-sponsored engagement against “Islamophobia” and “anti-Muslim racism” has long divided the political and academic scene, as well as Muslims.

In November, the resident of Upper Austria himself was the target of house searches among suspected Muslim Brothers. After he compared this “Operation Luxor” to the Nazi pogroms in 1938 in an article published in the USA, even the Salzburg university distanced itself from him.

He had “absolutely no understanding for comparing the procedure in a democratic constitutional state like Austria with events in the Nazi era”, said Reinhard Heinisch, Head of the Department of Political Science at the University of Salzburg. At the same time, however, Heinisch joined a supporters’ committee that condemns the raid on Hafez as an “intimidation attempt against a recognised academic”.

Hafez denies any connection to the Muslim Brotherhood. “No, I am not a Muslim Brotherhood member and I am not an Islamist,” he said in a press interview. Hafez also denies any proximity to the Turkish government.

The fact is, however, that he has been publishing the annual “Islamophobia Report” on behalf of the Turkish Seta Foundation since 2016. It not only denounces incidents that are actually hostile to Muslims, but also labels liberal Muslims and critics of political Islam as Islamophobes.

In the most recent report, even the Nobel Prize winner for literature Peter Handke, who is not known as a critic of Islam, made it onto the front cover. The judgement is based on Handke’s “glorification of the Serbs during the genocide in Bosnia” in the 1990s.

The Seta Foundation is a “non-partisan think tank” for Hafez, in fact it propagates the policies of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In 2019, it caused outrage with a list of journalists critical of the government.

The EU funding for the “Islamophobia Report” commissioned by Seta had already prompted Austrian People’s Party MEP Lukas Mandl to sharply criticise the EU Commission’s funding practice two years ago. He feels vindicated by the latest parliamentary decision.

“I hope that the Commission will follow Parliament’s clear mandate to act,” Mandl told the VOLKSBLATT newspaper. The Social Democrats (SPÖ) and the Greens rejected the motion for a resolution.

https://volksblatt.at/eu-parlament-kein-geld-mehr-fuer-umstrittenen-islamophobie-forscher/

“A grey passport” gives Turkish authorities the opportunity to allow individual Turkish citizens to enter Germany via the small official channels and without the bureaucratic hurdle of applying for a visa. The “grey passport” is an official service card that certifies that the holder is performing certain tasks on behalf of the issuing municipality in Germany. German customs have accepted such documents for years.

Now, however, the realisation is taking hold that – would you believe it? – an extensive abuse has been carried out. Eastern Anatolian communities in particular are suspected of simply selling the coveted documents to anyone who will pay for them. A “grey passport” is said to be worth 6000 to 8000 euros. In one case, a tour group put a used truck on the authority’s yard in return for 20 “grey passports”, the newspaper “Die Welt” reports.

Turkish companies in Germany reportedly occasionally write invitations to imaginatively invented events in Germany to their compatriots, for whose participation Turkish municipalities then issue the necessary service cards. The meetings never take place. Even in Corona times, many well-behaved German officials apparently did not notice that these were fake events. In other cases, invitations from German companies were apparently simply falsified.

So some Oriental officials are evidently playing a lucrative game with letters and seals that are taken seriously by German authorities and pave the way for Turks to come to Germany who would otherwise only have been allowed to enter as tourists for a few weeks. Nobody could have expected that, could they?

http://www.pi-news.net/2021/04/so-schleusen-tuerkische-behoerden-illegale-nach-deutschland/

Christian Piquemal, the charismatic former commander of the French Foreign Legion, and more than 1000 other former and active French military personnel have made a dramatic appeal to the French public.

More than 100 high-ranking active and former officers of the French armed forces and more than 1000 other French military personnel warned in an open letter of the possibility of civil war in France. “The violence is increasing day by day,” says the appeal, referring to the murder of the teacher Samuel Paty last year.

The danger comes from “Islamism and the hordes from the immigrant areas” as well as from a left-wing political milieu that preaches “anti-racism”. “There is no time to hesitate, otherwise the civil war will put an end to the growing chaos and the death toll will be […] in the thousands.”

The high-ranking former officers around the 80-year-old former commander of the French Foreign Legion, Christian Piquemal, declared themselves ready to “support politicians who guarantee the protection of the nation”.

The outcry of the political class in France was correspondingly loud. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, chairman of the Left Party, called the ex-soldiers “rebels”. Florence Parly, the French defence minister, has announced that she would be examining the possibility of action against all signatories of the Open Letter who are on active military service.

The French government is apparently having a look at how to counter the call.

“What seems most likely to me in this case are possible prosecutions for incitement to conduct contrary to duty and disciplinary action, as provided for in Article L322-18 of the Code of Military Justice,” explained Elodie Maumont, lawyer specializing in French military law.

Marine Le Pen, on the other hand, has been encouraged by the letter. She asked the signatories of the appeal to support her party in the upcoming French presidential election campaign.

Christian Piquemal headed the French PEGIDA movement at a large demonstration in Calais in 2016 and then lost the right to appear in public in uniform. A court acquitted him of the charge of having committed crimes however.

In a 2017 interview with reinformation.tv, Piquemal commented: “Immigration is massive, uncontrolled. This will lead to the disappearance of nation-states and populations […] The identity of large countries and in particular of France will disappear if an end is not put to this creeping Islamization which is due to uncontrolled immigration.”

https://freewestmedia.com/2021/04/29/frances-generals-warn-of-civil-war/

According to a study by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), there are currently between 5.3 and 5.6 million Muslims living in Germany. For comparison, according to the internet portal Statista, the number of Muslims was around 4.5 million in 2015 and around 4.2 million in 2009.

[…] The number of Muslims in Germany has increased in recent years. This is the result of a study presented by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) together with the Federal Ministry of the Interior in Nuremberg on Wednesday. According to the study, between 5.3 and 5.6 million people of the Muslim faith currently live in Germany, which corresponds to a share of 6.4 to 6.7 per cent of the total population.

“The Muslim population has become more diverse in the context of immigration from Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East in recent years,” said BAMF President Hans-Eckhard Sommer. […] (Source: Welt.de)

The development of the number of Muslims from 2009 to 2015 alone shows that the statistics probably only reflect half the truth and are rather glossed over; an increase of only around 300,000 in six years is almost impossible, given the high birth rate and immigration. The increase between 2015 and 2020 also belongs to the world of fantasy. Since 2015, around two million so-called refugees have “officially” entered the country, almost all of them Muslims.

For decades, the citizens have been told the old wives’ tale that the proportion of Muslims in Germany’s population is not particularly high, which serves to reassure and argue against critical voices that warn of Islamisation, repopulation and of a Muslim majority. One can only guess how many Muslims are already living in Germany, it could already be between 15 and 20 million if one looks at the school classes and the street scene in the large and medium-sized cities, with the small towns gradually catching up.

The spread and thus the increasing influence of Islam, is not exactly reassuring, a look at Sweden and France shows the future, which is by no means rosy.

https://politikstube.com/eine-studie-aus-der-fabelwelt-nur-rund-55-millionen-muslime-sollen-in-deutschland-leben/

By Monica Showalter

Looks like it’s not just mansions for smooth operator Patrisse Cullors, who co-founded Black Lives Matter.

She’s also into stretches at luxury resorts, with some very curious accounting.

According to an investigative report from the Daily Caller:

Los Angeles-based jail reform group led by BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors spent nearly $26,000 for “meetings” at a luxury Malibu beach resort in 2019, according to campaign finance records reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Reform LA Jails dropped $10,179 for “meetings and appearances” at the Calamigos Guest Ranch and Beach Club in Malibu, California, and another $15,593 at the Malibu Conference Center, a corporate conference facility owned by the resort, according to the records, which covered the time period between July and September 2019. Guests at the 200-acre resort, where rooms start at $600 a night, have exclusive access to a private five-acre strip of the Malibu coast.

The records show that the payments were made on behalf of the jail reform group by a consulting firm owned by Asha Bandele, a longtime mentor of Cullors and co-author of her 2018 biography, “When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir.”

That’s all fine and dandy, but the records of the groups involved don’t show any such “meetings,” the Caller reported.

A review of Reform LA Jails’ social media records shows that the group organized multiple events in the Los Angeles area in the second half of 2019, including a party at actress Jane Fonda’s house and a “day party + summit” in Pasadena featuring live music and local artists.

But the DCNF was unable to locate any public records of the group holding an event at the Malibu beach resort.

Which might mean that the “meeting” involved a lot of lounging around. Some of it yes, was for conference space, so some kind of meeting may have happened. But a lot of it was not, and it was done in a three-month window in 2019. Self-described “trained Marxist” Cullors elsewhere has dropped a cool $3.2 million on four houses and mansions, at least two of them in the Los Angeles area. She couldn’t hold these off-the-record “meetings” in one of those places? Sounds a little funny.

The resort, in fact, is a pretty tony affair. Rooms start at $669 a night for the cheapies ($839 with taxes and fees), and go up to $795 ($992 with taxes and fees) for the luxe ones, according to Expedia. Membership rates may be lower, if she’s a repeat-customer member there, but either way, costs can pile up fast. Amenities include a private beach, lake tours, pool, spa, air-conditioning, free wi-fi, and pet-friendly.

And this is the only resort visit that we know about. There could be others.

 The Caller continued:

“Reform LA Jails’ filings raise a number of questions,” said Peter Flaherty, the chairman of the conservative watchdog group National Legal and Policy Center. “An audit would establish whether any campaign funds were used for personal purposes.”

 BLM, in fact, has taken in tremendous corporate donations. Following its trashing of American cities, leaving black shop owners weeping in the ruins after losing all they had worked for in the BLM arson attacks, lootings, or lost business, corporate America lined up to donate to these trashers, in hopes the crocodile would eat them last.

Cullors, as noted earlier, is a “trained Marxist” and through her co-founder, Opal Tometi, seems to learned her wokester schtick at the late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez’s knee. The nomenklatura part in particular, as if all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. If the Caller could find this resort activity on someone claiming to fight for ‘the people,’ it’s probable that a lot more of this stuff is going on. Diamond life, as they say. And sure enough, a smooth operator.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/04/luxe_life_blm_founder_dropped_26000_at_luxury_malibu_resort_daily_caller_reports.html

In addition to wars, famine and droughts, the current coronavirus pandemic could trigger a new wave of immigration towards Europe, Swiss migration expert Eduard Gnesa warns.

“Following the previous ones, Europe and Switzerland are threatened by another wave of the coronavirus, but this one is migratory in its nature,” Gnesa said.

He was director of the Swiss Federal Office of Immigration, Integration and Emigration between 2001 and 2004 and in 2009 was appointed special ambassador of international cooperation in migration. Now retired from public service, Gnesa currently owns a consultancy firm in Switzerland, KMES Partners.   

Gnesa illustrates his claim with the situation on the US-Mexico border. In February alone, US Border Patrol officers blocked 100,000 illegal migrants from entering US. territory and Mexico itself fears a wave of migration at its southern borders. Many immigrants are counting on the migration policy of Democrat President Joe Biden, which is, unlike his predecessor, taking a pro-migration, open borders turn.

Gnesa expects that as soon as border restrictions are lifted, significant increases in migration statistics can be expected immediately. In this regard, the expert notes that he expects a steady increase, with a maximum of 15,000 applications per year in Switzerland. In this regard, it should be noted that a previous estimate of his proved to be conservative. In 2015, his analysis predicted 30,000 asylum seekers, while the actual number was 40,000 in Switzerland.

Gnesa’s assumption is also echoed in relevant EU and World Bank analyses. A similar conclusion is reached, for example, by a research institute attached to the European Parliament (EASO Asylum Report 2020), at the end of which the authors describe that middle- and low-income states typically serve as starting points for migration routes. That is why if the coronavirus hits these countries hard, it will trigger migration trends to Europe.

The World Bank examined, among other things, the financial transactions of migrants in Europe on their way home. This is a significant data point because, according to World Bank analysis, a significant share of the GDP of the poorest countries (nearly 10 percent) comes from remittances from migrants in developed countries.

Thus, if economic problems also occur in developed countries (in this case, for example, if an immigrant working as a waiter in Europe cannot transfer enough income home to Africa to help his or her own family), this is also reflected in the GDP of the migrant’s country of origin. The World Bank has clearly shown that remittances to low- and medium-economy countries fell by roughly 20 percent in 2020 compared to the previous year (from $554 billion to $445 billion). Even more strapped for cash, those who previously chose to remain in their native countries, could also resort to migration.

https://rmx.news/article/article/swiss-expert-warns-covid-may-trigger-migration-wave-to-europe