Turkish Lobbyists Distribute Election Campaign Letter from Erdogan to Turkish Diaspora in Germany

Ger­man media is report­ing that the Turk­ish rul­ing par­ty AKP is using events orga­nized by lob­by­ing orga­ni­za­tions and mosque con­gre­ga­tions to dis­trib­ute an elec­tion cam­paign let­ter from Pres­i­dent Erdo­gan to Turks in Ger­many. Accord­ing to the Die Welt report:

Novem­ber 15, 2022 The Turk­ish rul­ing par­ty AKP is dis­trib­ut­ing let­ters from Pres­i­dent Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan to cit­i­zens of Turk­ish ori­gin in Ger­many. In the let­ter, obtained by WELT, that has already been hand­ed out in mosque com­mu­ni­ties and Turk­ish asso­ci­a­tions since Sep­tem­ber, Erdo­gan calls on Turks abroad to sup­port him in next year’s par­lia­men­tary and pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. “The elec­tions to be held next year are cru­cial both for crown­ing the 100th anniver­sary of our repub­lic and for real­iz­ing the vision of 2053. I have full con­fi­dence that you will con­tin­ue to sup­port the future of our coun­try to the best of your abil­i­ty,” it reads. (…) In the let­ter, Erdo­gan looks back on the AKP’s peri­od in gov­ern­ment, which began in 2001. Twen­ty-one years ago, he writes, the par­ty start­ed with the “goal of a Greater Turkey.” “You, as our cit­i­zens liv­ing abroad, are an essen­tial ele­ment of this blessed march. Wher­ev­er a cit­i­zen of ours lives, we as a state will stand by you,” the state­ment con­tin­ues. (Trans­lat­ed using deepl.com)

Read the rest here.

Accord­ing to the report, the let­ter was dis­trib­uted at events orga­nized by the Turk­ish-Islam­ic Union for Reli­gious Affairs (DITIB), the Islamis­che Gemein­schaft Mil­lî Görüş (IGMG), and the lob­by orga­ni­za­tion Union of Inter­na­tion­al Democ­rats, among oth­ers. The let­ter explic­it­ly men­tions the estab­lish­ment of the Yunus Emre Insti­tute and the Maarif Foun­da­tion as gov­ern­ment achievements.