Turkish Lobbying Group Slams Vice President of German Parliament for Insulting Erdogan

A Turk­ish-Euro­pean lob­by­ing group has pub­licly crit­i­cized Wolf­gang Kubic­ki, vice pres­i­dent of the Ger­man par­lia­ment after Kubic­ki made dis­parag­ing remarks about Turk­ish Pres­i­dent Erdo­gan. Accord­ing to a report by Turk­ish state broad­cast­er TRT:

Sep­tem­ber 30, 2022 The Union of Inter­na­tion­al Democ­rats (UID) has sharply crit­i­cized FDP politi­cian Wolf­gang Kubic­ki for his recent high­ly con­tro­ver­sial speech. “With these insult­ing state­ments, Kubic­ki has first of all dam­aged his own dig­ni­ty and per­son­al­i­ty, but more­over also the respectabil­i­ty of his par­ty and the par­lia­ment he rep­re­sents,” said a state­ment by the orga­ni­za­tion on Thurs­day. The FDP politi­cian had most recent­ly insult­ed Turk­ish Pres­i­dent Recep Tayyip Erdoğan dur­ing an elec­tion cam­paign appear­ance. Kubick­i’s remarks were heav­i­ly crit­i­cized on social media and by many oth­er politi­cians. Accord­ing to UID, Kubick­i’s con­tro­ver­sial speech inflict­ed “great dam­age” on Ger­man pol­i­tics. They also revealed “his per­son­al polit­i­cal and moral lev­el.” The politi­cian was called upon to apol­o­gize to Turks. (Trans­lat­ed by deepl.com)

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Kubic­ki had called Erdo­gan a “lit­tle sew­er rat” dur­ing an elec­tion cam­paign appear­ance in Hildesheim. Accord­ing to media reports, Erdo­gan filed a crim­i­nal com­plaint for defama­tion against Kubic­ki. As in the past, Erdo­gan is rep­re­sent­ed by Cologne lawyer Mustafa Kaplan.

The Union of Inter­na­tion­al Democ­rats (UID) (for­mer­ly known as the Union of Euro­pean Turk­ish Democ­rats) describes itself as a vol­un­tary NGO  found­ed in 2004 that oper­ates in sev­er­al Euro­pean coun­tries. Its aims include increas­ing the eco­nom­ic, polit­i­cal, and social activ­i­ties of Turks and “sis­ter com­mu­ni­ties” abroad with­out alien­at­ing their iden­ti­ties and val­ues, as well as com­bat­ting Islam­o­pho­bia. Ger­man media has described it as a lob­by­ing group for Pres­i­dent Erdoğan and his AKP that empha­sizes Turk­ish val­ues and cus­toms. The Ger­man Office for the Pro­tec­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion mon­i­tors the UID, describ­ing it as “nation­al­ist” and incom­pat­i­ble with Ger­many’s free demo­c­ra­t­ic order.