Emergent Conversation 24

This essay is part of the series Kurdistan(s): Repression, Resistance, and the Fight for Survival,
PoLAR Online Emergent Conversation 24

By Deniz Yonucu & Kerem Schamberger

In January 2014, Kerem Schamberger’s mother received a letter from Commerzbank in Germany, which seemed almost surreal. After 45 years of being a customer, the bank demanded that she revoke her son’s account authorization. Otherwise, they would close all her accounts. When she asked why, the bank officers responded that they had received information about Kerem, a pro-Kurdish communist activist, scholar, and co-author of this piece, that made business relationship with him impossible. They declined to specify the nature of the information or its source.

As we show in this piece, this was not an isolated incident of corporate discrimination, but part of a broader pattern of lawfare, the weaponization of legal systems to criminalize progressive politics and suppress freedom of speech, a practice typically associated with countries in the Global South (Zaffaroni et al. 2023). While Germany’s repression of pro-Palestinian activism and speech has recently drawn attention to its anti-democratic practices (Doughan 2024), the country’s decades-long suppression of Kurdish and Turkish leftists, particularly those in solidarity with the Kurdish Freedom Movement, reveals that such practices cannot be explained solely through the lens of post-Holocaust guilt. Instead, they reflect a broader pattern in which Germany, often seen as an exemplary model of democratic norms, deploys anti-terror laws and other legal mechanisms to suppress progressive dissent and restrict freedom of expression, in ways that mirror the tactics associated with authoritarian countries. Conversely, the crackdown on pro-Palestinian activism in Germany shows that the legal repression of pro-Kurdish Freedom Movement activists is not merely a transnational extension of Turkey’s authoritarianism, but also a revealing symptom of Germany’s own authoritarian drift and political complicity in such repressive practices.

In this piece, drawing on Germany’s use of legal mechanisms to suppress activism associated with the Kurdish Freedom Movement, as well as Kurdish cultural expression and production, we demonstrate how the repression of colonized populations can transcend borders and reveal the instrumentalization of law to suppress dissent within a liberal democracy. Before turning to the case of Germany, we provide a brief background on anti-Kurdish lawfare in Turkey, which serves as the key source of the punitive political and legal architecture targeting Kurdish activism.

Anti-Kurdish Lawfare in Turkey

While Turkey has long maintained an “illiberal judiciary” (Coşkun 2010) targeting Kurds and other leftist populations in Turkey, Turkish lawfare has escalated at an unprecedented scale over last two decades. The 2006 amendments to Turkey’s anti-terror law represented a significant shift in the utilization of legal tools to target dissent, particularly Kurdish dissent. These amendments enabled the criminalization of democratic Kurdish political activities through the implementation of penal laws, administrative procedures, states of emergency, and warrants (see also Çelik in this series). By expanding both the scope of crimes classified as “terrorist offenses” and the ease with which such charges can be applied, authorities lengthened sentences, legitimized violations of fair trial rights, and established a precedent of pre-trial detentions that last for years, effectively transforming the judicial process into a form of punishment itself (Yonucu 2018).

The implementation of the amended anti-terror laws became increasingly evident during the extensive Koma Civakên Kurdistanê (KCK, Kurdistan Communities Union) operations of 2010-2011, which targeted Kurdish politicians, legal professionals, intellectuals, and students on an unparalleled scale. Statistics reveal the extent to which the law has been instrumentalized. While Turkey had 273 individuals convicted of “terror” offenses in 2005, this number had risen to 12,897 by 2011, following the KCK operations. In a classic “boomerang effect” (Césaire 1972, Arendt 1973)—where repressive measures initially deployed against colonized populations are later redirected toward the imperial core—the scope of legal repression has expanded, especially after the sweeping purge of Erdoğan’s former ally, the Gülen movement, following the attempted coup in 2016. What began as targeted suppression of Kurdish activism and its allies has grown to include a broader range of individuals critical of the government, regardless of their ethnic and religious backgrounds, or political affiliations. From 2015 to 2021, a total of 2,224,724 individuals were subjected to investigation due to allegations of affiliation with terrorist organizations (Turkey Rights Monitor).^[1]

Lawfare Crosses Borders

This strategic use of anti-terror laws has not remained confined within Turkey’s borders. Pro-Kurdish Freedom Movement activists residing in Germany, many of whom had sought refuge in Germany to evade persecution in Turkey, encounters targeting under German anti-terror legislation. This targeting is not for alleged criminal activity within Germany; rather, it is for supporting pro-Kurdish and other leftist organizations in Turkey. This transnational expansion was largely enabled by amendments to Section 129 of the German Criminal Code in 2002. But, even before then, numerous Pro-Kurdish Freedom Movement activists had already been charged and imprisoned in Germany beginning with the well-known Düsseldorf trials in 1989, which involved 16 Kurdish defendants. As one Kurdish journalist explained to political scientist Bahar Baser, this trial marked “the first sign that Germany would ally with Turkey on this matter, and that they had to struggle with both states on German soil” (Baser 2017, 681).

The Section 129 of the German Criminal Code allows punishment for “forming, participating or supporting a group that is aimed at the commission of violent acts with terrorist motivation” (Wörner 2012, 1049). Crucially, “to be criminally responsible, a suspect does not need to participate in the actual commission of such acts, nor does the suspect even need to be a member of a terrorist group. In fact, the targeted object of the intended act does not need to be concretely endangered at all” (1049, authors’ emphasis).  Paragraph B added to the Criminal Code in 2002 made it possible to charge activists for actions committed by others abroad, treating supporters of alleged “terrorist organizations” as criminally responsible for crimes committed by different people in different countries. Legal demonstrations, fundraising campaigns, and cultural events can now serve as evidence of association with a “terrorist” organization. In 2010, the German Federal Supreme Court extended 129b’s application to alleged Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê (Kurdistan Workers Party, PKK) members. Since then, around 70 Kurdish activists have been tried and sentenced to prison under this provision (Glasner-Hummel et.al 2023). As in Turkey, defendants typically spend years in pre-trial detention, often in isolation. As in Turkey, the judicial process itself becomes punishment.

Preventive Policing and Punitive Surveillance

German Criminal Code 129 not only paves the way for being individuals punished for crimes that they did not commit and took place elsewhere (with its paragraph b). It also facilitates the suppression of basic civil liberties and freedom of expression. This contributes to the further “institutionalization of systems of preventative policing” (Kapoor, 2018) while the deployment of punitive surveillance enables punishment through administrative and police powers, especially as it rules that “investigators need not to produce evidence of a committed crime” (Wörner 2012, 1049).

Kerem Schamberger has been under domestic intelligence surveillance for over a decade, experiencing a cascade of punitive measures that reveal the lawfare’s scope. Beyond the banking incident, Kerem experienced professional persecution in 2016 when Ludwig Maximilian University, where he was pursuing his doctorate, offered him a research position. The domestic intelligence service of the Federal State of Bavaria sent the university a ten-page “report of findings” detailing his legal political activities and concluding that he was unsuitable for public service. A substantial solidarity campaign and a mounting pressure from the media compelled the university to disregard this “recommendation” and employ him.

Starting in the summer of 2017, Kerem faced several investigations into the display of symbols of the Kurdish Freedom Movement. Specifically, this involved, among other things, the display of symbols associated with the Kurdish units in Rojava: Yekîneyên Parastina Jin (YPJ, Women’s Protection Units) and Yekîneyên Parastina Gel (YPG, People’s Protection Units). Both the YPJ and YPG played a crucial role in the defeat of ISIS in Syria and have been part of the international anti-ISIS coalition, of which Germany is also a member. Despite this, some federal states in Germany banned the symbols of the YPJ and YPG, claiming that when individuals known for their solidarity with the Kurdish Freedom Movement displayed these logos, they were in fact expressing support for the PKK, which has been on the EU list of terrorist organisations since 2002. Munich prosecutors initiated 25 preliminary proceedings against Kerem for social media posts and demonstration attendance. The German police, which included a Turkish German police officer, raided Kerem’s home at 5:30 a.m., confiscating his electronics for several months. Such “dawn operations” are an integral part of Turkey’s anti-terror operations as well.

Another example of preventive repression against Kurdish dissent in Germany involves the case of SG, an 18-year-old Kurdish activist. On September 1, 2022, German police arrived at her home with three vehicles to confiscate her passport and identity card. In a “regulatory order,” the residents’ registration office informed her that they had received “notifications from the security authorities” stating that she was “firmly integrated into the organizational structures of the PKK” (Interview with Schamberger, October 2022). The authorities further claimed that in the future, she could potentially play a more prominent role within these structures. As evidence for this claim, it was noted that SG had travelled to Istanbul twice that year. The office argued that for such a “risk assessment,” unambiguous evidence was not necessary. It was “sufficient if there is reasonable suspicion that the interests of the Federal Republic of Germany are endangered,” they wrote (Frankfurter Rundschau).^[2] SG later challenged the police-imposed ban in court and won her legal battle in the administrative court in 2022. Yet, this was not an isolated case. In an echo of travel bans and passport cancellations imposed on dissidents in Turkey, 131 German citizens, most of whom are Kurdish and other leftist activists, were subjected to travel bans in Germany between 2018 and 2022 (ANF News).^[3]

Cultural Warfare: A Racial and Colonial Matrix

These repressions extend beyond individual activists to include cultural and intellectual production. In February 2019, Germany’s Federal Administrative Court banned the Kurdish Mesopotamia Publishing House and MiR Music, which housed one of the world’s largest archives of Kurdish music, claiming their profits funded the PKK. Police seized books, CDs, and music archives, including rare traditional dengbêj songs, effectively criminalizing Kurdish cultural preservation and expression (Glasner-Hummel et.al 2023; Von Biberstein 2025). A total of 50,000 items were confiscated. When the books from the Mesopotamia Publishing House were confiscated in 1995, they were later discovered discarded in the trash by Kurdish sanitation workers employed by the city of Cologne (Glasner-Hummel et.al 2023).

The suppression of Kurdish culture and cultural production has a long history in Germany, including policies that prevent the use of Kurdish names. Ironically, in the relatively more liberal context of the 2013 peace process between the Kurdish Freedom Movement and the Turkish state, this practice was even covered by the Turkish media.  CNN Turk for instance, published a story titled Hiwroj Cannot Get an Identity Registration in Germany. The news article reported that German authorities had informed a Kurdish family living in Germany that they could not name their newborn German citizen daughter Hiwroj, because the letter W is not part of the Turkish alphabet. W (along with other letters like X, Q, Î, Û, and Ê), is part of the Kurdish alphabet but has been historically banned in Turkey, especially in names, as part of the broader criminalization of the Kurdish language and identity (Zeydanlıoğlu 2012). Such measures reflect a deeper, historically rooted collaboration between Germany and Turkey, one that includes complicity in violence against Indigenous populations within Turkey, most remarkably during the Armenian Genocide (Ihrig 2016). It is important to note here that, this complicity also entails the reluctance to provide any form of protection or to acknowledge the anti-Kurdish attacks perpetrated by Arab and Turkish supremacists in Germany.

Conclusion

Germany’s repression of Kurdish dissent, cultural, and political expression transforms Kurdish populations in Germany into suspect communities. These repressions create what we might call a transnational racial matrix that serves Turkish colonial interests while threatening democracy in Germany. The boomerang effect we discussed above in the context of Turkey’s lawfare against Kurdish political activism cannot not be seen as an exception. As anthropologists of the state demonstrate, the study of the margins is crucially important in understanding the operations, manifestations, and effects of state power across multiple territories and populations (Das and Poole 2011). At margins, various governmental techniques “are concretely being assembled, tried and tested” (Wacquant 2008, 68), so that they can be exported elsewhere or other populations. The forms of repression long familiar to pro-Kurdish activists and their allies in Germany are now becoming increasingly visible to international community and scholars, particularly through the crackdown on pro-Palestinian activism. Section 129 of the German Criminal Code, is now being applied to a wider range of dissenting voices, including white German climate activists. On 21 May 2024 the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Neuruppin brought charges under Section 129 against five members of the Last Generation climate campaign group, accusing them of “forming a criminal organization.” This marked a significant escalation in the criminalization of the climate justice movement in Germany (Amnesty International). ^[5]

With the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany, AfD) now the second biggest party in German parliament, these repressive mechanisms are likely to expand further. By criminalizing intentions rather than actions, Germany’s anti-terror laws enable administrative officers and police to bypass judicial processes, punish individuals without trials, lock people behind bars for crimes they did not commit and did not take place in Germany, turn the trial process itself into a form of punishment.

Today, Germanys legal and cultural repressions make Hannah Arendt’s observations alarmingly relevant:  that punishment for “possible crimes” is integral to totalitarian rule, turning “suspects” into objective enemies of the state (Arendt 1973[1951]), 426).

Deniz Yonucu is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) at Newcastle University. Her research interests lie at the intersection of anthropology, political theory, law & society studies, and urban studies. More specifically, her work focuses on counterinsurgency and policing, class, racism, resistance, world building and abolitionist practices of the oppressed, coloniality and memory.  Her monograph Police, Provocation, Politics: Counterinsurgency in Istanbul (Cornell University Press) is the winner of the 2023 Anthony Leeds Prize for the best book in urban anthropology. She is a co-founder of the European Anthropology Association’s Anthropology of Surveillance Network and the Under Surveillance podcast series.

Kerem Schamberger is a communication scholar working in public relations at medico international, focusing on issues of flight and migration. His political work centers on solidarity with political movements in the Global South, especially in Kurdistan and Palestine, and he regularly publishes on media critique, repression, and international solidarity. As an activist and author, he is engaged in various networks of solidarity. Previously, he taught and conducted research at LMU Munich. He completed his PhD on the transnational media network of the Kurdish Freedom Movement.

Notes

[1] https://turkeyrightsmonitor.com/tr/teror-sucu-istatistikleri  Last Accessed: July 30, 2025.

[2] https://www.fr.de/politik/immer-mehr-deutsche-duerfen-nicht-mehr-ausreisen-92008671.html Last Accessed: July 30, 2025.

[3] https://anfenglishmobile.com/news/travel-ban-imposed-to-131-german-citizens-between-2018-and-2022-64718 Last Accessed: July 30, 2025.

[4] https://www.cnnturk.com/dunya/almanyadan-hiwroja-kimlik-yok-0 Last Accessed: July 30, 2025.

[5] https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/europe-and-central-asia/western-central-and-south-eastern-europe/germany/report-germany/ Last Accessed: July 30, 2025.

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