As hundreds of people gathered for a rally in support of Turkish opposition leader Ekrem Imamoglu in central Berlin, Turkish builder Ali was queueing up to buy pastries across town.
“In my opinion, there’s nothing wrong with it,” said Ali of the arrest of opposition leader Ekrem Imamoglu, which has sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in over a decade.
“If something similar happened here, the police would react the same way. Of course the person has to go to court,” said the 55-year-old, who did not want to give his last name.
Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul and a key rival of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was arrested on March 19 on corruption charges his supporters say are false.
Widely seen as the only politician capable of challenging Erdogan at the ballot box, Imamoglu was elected as the opposition CHP party’s candidate for the 2028 election on the day he was jailed.
Hundreds of thousands of people have since taken to the streets in Turkey to protest against his imprisonment.
The mass protests have prompted a repressive government response that has been sharply condemned by rights groups and drawn criticism from abroad.
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Imamoglu’s arrest has also sparked protests in Germany, which has the largest Turkish community outside of Turkey.
‘Wrong direction’
Around three million people with Turkish heritage live in Germany, many of them the descendants of “guest workers” invited under a massive economic programme in the 1960s and ’70s.
Several hundred of them attended a protest in central Berlin on Sunday in support of Imamoglu, carrying placards with slogans such as “We are all Imamoglu”.
“With the Erdogan government, Turkey is going in the wrong direction,” said retired tradesman Muharrem Dogan, 75.
“We want democracy, the rule of law and order again. We are fighting against the Erdogan machine,” said Dogan, who has been living in Germany since 1971.
“I am here to defend democracy in Turkey,” said archaeology student Sebnem Turhan, 27.
“We are here because of the mass incarcerations of the protesters and all kinds of violations of democratic rights in Turkey,” she said.
Turhan said she moved to Germany from Turkey recently because “I don’t feel safe as a woman, I don’t feel safe as a young person, the economy is going terrible, in general we are not happy”.
“I feel like this is our last chance to defend democracy,” she said.
‘Unthinkable’
Ziya Akcetin, chairman of the local Berlin chapter of the CHP, which helped organise the protest, said the “anger” among Turkish opposition supporters in Germany was “so great that we no longer know what to do”.
“What is happening in Turkey right now is unthinkable,” he said.
However, Erdogan has a strong base of support in the Turkish community in Germany, and 67 percent of them voted for him in Turkey’s last election in 2023.
“They don’t feel the pressure and the dark climate there. They don’t suffer from the economic situation in Turkey. They earn well here,” Akcetin said.
Berlin is home to some 200,000 people with Turkish roots, or around six percent of the total population.
The Kreuzberg district in particular has become a hub for Turkish culture and restaurants serving the famous doner kebab.
On Sunday, a 59-year-old Turkish care worker who gave his name only as Yusuf was enjoying a cup of coffee outside a kiosk in Kreuzberg.
“I also experienced his predecessors, and I know what Erdogan has done for his people,” Yusuf said.
“What’s going on in Turkey is that someone has stolen and received a punishment for it, and the people somehow have something against it. I am not in favour of that,” he said.
