Migrant Victory Parades for Turkey’s Erdogan in Germany Spark Diversity Fears for Progressives

German politicians have been left fearing the consequences of diversity after migrant parades celebrated the re-election of Turkey’s Islamist president took place in the country.

Numerous elected officials within Germany have expressed concern at the parades, which celebrated the victory of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey’s presidential election on Sunday.

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According to a report by German newspaper Bild, however, Erdoğan’s re-election was met not with despair from the country’s Turkish population, but with jubilation on German streets, with “tens of thousands” taking to the streets to celebrate the foreign politician’s victory while waving Turkish flags.

{snip} Turkish citizens living in Germany have the right to vote in elections back in their homeland, and have previously overwhelmingly backed Erdoğan’s Islamist nationalist government.

Such displays of jubilation have left many progressive German politicians on both the left and right deeply uncomfortable, with some finding it difficult to square the idea that ethnic Turks in their country could support an adversary of Europe and European values despite many of them being German citizens.

“I find the images of motorcades extremely disturbing,” centre-right MP Serap Güler — herself descended from Turkish migrants — remarked {snip}

Another politician with Turkish heritage, Green Party minister Cem Özdemir, meanwhile took to Twitter to express his frustration, describing the celebrations as rejecting Germany’s democracy.

{snip} “They are an unmistakable rejection of our pluralistic democracy and evidence of our failure under them.”

“Are we prepared for the fact that ultranationalism & fundamentalism will now be spread even more strongly in this country by new imams from Ankara?” he went on to ask.

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