German-based allies of Turkish president launch new party

Germany is heading into unknown territory in advance of the June European elections as two — possibly three — new parties aim to peel away support of frustrated voters. German-based allies of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan have founded Democratic Alliance for Diversity and Awakening (Dava), targeted at 1.5 million Germans with Turkish roots.

Meanwhile, a new “Value Union” (WU) party is hoping to position itself to the right of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). But on Saturday all eyes were on pro-Russian politician Sahra Wagenknecht when she launched her eponymous new populist alliance BSW, mixing leftist welfare with restrictive migration policies and a strident anti-war message.

The BSW is already polling 7 per cent, pulling in votes from the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and Wagenknecht’s old political home, the Linke (Left). To 450 delegates attending its first party conference, Dr Wagenknecht promised to offer voters “a voice that they don’t have with other parties”.

She urged talks to Russia to expedite the end of its war in Ukraine and criticised Berlin for “delivering arms to Ukraine for a victory in which, alas, even the Ukrainian generals no longer believe”.

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Dr Wagenknecht hopes the BSW’s restrictive migration promises will boost its chances in eastern Germany, where three state elections loom in September and the AfD is polling aboce 30 per cent. After another weekend of mass demonstrations against the AfD and leaked radical expulsion policies, however, Dr Wagenknecht may have fresh competition from the right.

The WU and its founder, Hans-Georg, see potential to win over older western German conservatives who are appalled by the AfD but feel excluded from the current CDU. “The CDU is brain-dead,” said Mr Hans-Georg Maaßen, a controversial former domestic intelligence chief and founder of a WU electoral alliance, on course to be an official party in time for the European elections.

Germany’s increasingly volatile political mood was marked by a large protest in Munich on Sunday against policies of the ruling coalition of Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Just 21 per cent of Germans would choose him directly as their leader, according to a weekend poll, while his SPD is now on 14 per cent, seven points behind the AfD.

Just over halfway through his coalition’s four-year term, some 70 per cent of those polled are unhappy with the work of Mr Scholz and 76 per cent unhappy with his government. In a busy year of European, state and municipal elections, Germany’s greatest political wild card comes from the relatively unknown Dava alliance. In its founding statement Dava, allied to Mr Erdogan’s ruling AKP, promises a new political home for German voters tired of the “hypocrisy towards Turkey” —particularly in Mr Scholz’s centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — and “unequal treatment ... of people with foreign roots”.

Its founders are political newcomers but not entirely unknown: many have either direct ties to Mr Erdogan or DITIB. This organisation, steered from Turkey, runs an estimated 2,350 Islamic congregations in Germany.

About 70 per cent of practising Muslims attend a mosque funded by DITIB. Postwar economic migration programmes mean nearly three million people with Turkish roots live in Germany, about half of which have German citizenship.

That number could increase if new migration rules agreed in the Bundestag are implemented. This would liberalise migration conditions for long-term foreign nationals resident in Germany. In last year’s presidential elections, some 67 per cent of German-resident Turkish nationals who voted backed Mr Erdogan — 15 points above the result in Turkey. CDU interior affairs spokesman Christoph de Vries warned in the Bild tabloid that Dava offered Mr Erdogan “further leverage for political influence in Germany”.

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