Some in the European Parliament are already worried, two months before the elections: at least German MPs are frightened that the Dava party could get one or two seats.
The political association Dava, short for “Democratic Alliance for Diversity and Awakening”, was just thirteen days old when its chairman Teyfik Özcan was forced to make his first official statement: the “targeted attempts” were being observed “with great concern”, to defame Dava. Some media in Germany had called the new association the “Erdogan Party,” and General Secretary Bijan Djir-Sarai from the Liberals warned of an “extended arm” of the Turkish president’s government in Germany. According to the Dava board, it’s all slander.
In fact, there are a number of personal connections within their ranks that suggest a certain proximity to the Turkish ruling party AKP. Fatih Zingal, Dava’s leading candidate for the European elections, was a long-time member of the board of the Union of International Democrats (UID), an AKP lobby group that is active in Germany and Europe. Another candidate, Ali Ihsan Ünlü, was chairman of the Lower Saxony branch of the Islamic association Ditib, which reports to the Turkish religious authority Diyanet. According to Özcan, “personal preferences” of the candidates.
The founders of Dava are currently collecting signatures, they need 4,000 pieces to take part in the European elections. Given that the organization does not yet have party status, sufficient staff, structures or the required signatures, many experts consider the massive response to be exaggerated. A look at the history of other small Turkish-German parties such as the Alliance of German Democrats, ADD for short, or the Big Party also suggests that such projects remain rather insignificant. So why the strong reaction? Is there a momentum that could ensure that Dava will have more success than similar parties?
October 7 can therefore represent a thematic vehicle for the movement to get supporters to participate in the election and votes on election day. Muslims in Germany are angry and frustrated by the German government’s perceived reluctance to condemn Israeli attacks. Dava wants to fill this gap. In its program, Dava advocates a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders. Middle East experts, foundations and the federal government share this demand. The Dava recently made an appeal to the latter on social media: stop the military offensive in Rafah. The Israeli attacks are “means of ethnic oppression and cleansing,” it says. The founders of Dava express themselves even more clearly on their Facebook accounts. Gaza is “currently the largest concentration camp in the world,” Teyfik Özcan wrote on the platform at the end of last year. However, he also says that attacks like those carried out by Hamas “should not happen.”
The war in the Middle East has led to politicization among Muslims in Germany. However, attention to such topics also declines over time. After the Bundestag passed the Armenia resolution on June 2, 2016, there was also great outrage within the community of Turkish origin; the ADD was formed in response in the same month. It never received many votes.
A large proportion of people who are eligible to vote for Dava rather follow foreign than German media. The media debate here is a kind of German-German soliloquy. Experts do not believe that the media coverage will get the Dava very far. But it is also true that many migrants and people of Turkish origin in Germany experience racism and isolation and do not feel addressed by the parties in the Bundestag – this increases the longing for a party that takes up these feelings.
How big the Dava’s voter potential is is unclear. There are around 5.5 million Muslims living in Germany, and more than 40 percent of them also have German citizenship. But they are anything but a homogeneous bloc when it comes to their political views. The target group will be conservative Muslims of Turkish origin, who will be reached through their connections to the Ditib mosque network. Due to the easier access to dual citizenship recently passed in the Bundestag, the number of potential Dava voters could increase slightly. There is also no barrier clause for entering the EU Parliament. For small parties like Dava, it could also be the last chance for entry into parliament, as the federal government decided last year to campaign for a change in EU electoral law. Accordingly, a two percent threshold could apply to the 2029 election.
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