Germany: 'DAVA' party woos voters with Turkish roots

Germany's newly founded "Democratic Alliance for Diversity and Awakening" (DAVA) is currently a voters' association, but it intends to run as a party in the European elections on June 9. This announcement in January triggered a heated debate in Germany, with some political observers accusing the new party of being no more than a mouthpiece of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Four candidates have been presented, and they all have had ties to Turkey's governing party: 45-year-old lawyer Fatih Zingal is the top candidate. He was born in Germany to Turkish immigrants and was a member of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) for 10 years, until 2011. He was a spokesman for the Union of European Democrats (UID), which German authorities describe as a lobby organization for Turkey's ruling AKP party. Ahead of elections in Turkey, the UID organized campaign appearances by Erdogan and other Turkish officials in Germany and other European countries.

Candidate Yonca Kayaoglu, a trained engineer and former chairperson of the UID Youth in the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg, is also running for a seat in the European Parliament. She is campaigning heavily on social media to collect the required 4,000 signatures for her candidacy.

The other two candidates, Mustafa Yoldas and Ali Ihsan Ünlü, are both well-known as representatives of Turkish-Muslim communities in northern Germany. Yoldas was involved with the Islamic Community Milli Görüs (IGMG), while Ünlü belonged to the Turkish-Islamic Union, or DITIB for short. Both these umbrella organizations maintain close relations with Ankara.

Erdogan's extended arm?

DAVA Chairman Teyfik Özcan was born in Germany in 1988 and later studied law. He has been contributing reports and opinion pieces to Turkish state broadcaster TRT, which critics describe as a propaganda machine for the AKP.  Özcan writes about the grievances of Turkish immigrants in Germany focusing on racism, Islamophobia and high inflation.

Özcan tends to lash out at German politicians with a Turkish background, denouncing Serap Güler, of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), for wearing a short skirt.

Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir (Greens), the only member of the current federal government who has Turkish roots, is a staunch critic of Erdogan. He also described DAVA as another AKP offshoot, writing on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter, that this was "the last thing Germany needs." CDU lawmaker Jens Spahn described DAVA as the latest attempt to sabotage the integration of Turks in Germany. SPD parliamentary leader Rolf Mützenich, meanwhile, said he was convinced the party would not be relevant in any way.

A new attempt to exert influence in Germany

Top candidate Fatih Zingal is adamant that there's no reason to suspect his party's candidates of being controlled by the Turkish president. He told DW that the candidates' decadeslong affiliations with organizations associated with Erdogan's party mean nothing.

"Over 65% of Turks in Germany, including our party chairman Mr. Özcan and myself, prefer the current Turkish president and his policies over the previous ones. Nevertheless, that does not mean we are Erdogan's extended arm," he said.

Political scientist Kemal Bozay, from the Center for Radicalization Research and Prevention at the Cologne International University of Applied Sciences, begs to differ: "The AKP- and Erdogan-affiliated groups and movements have long been trying to establish their lobby structures in Germany in order to gain influence on the political landscape in Germany," he told DW. To him, DAVA is just another attempt to do this.

Previous attempts include the "Alliance of German Democrats" (AD-Demokraten) which garnered 41,251 votes in the 2017 federal elections, the "Alliance for Innovation and Justice" (BIG), which received 68,647 votes in the 2019 vote for the European Parliament, and finally, there was the cooperation with the minor "Team Todenhöfer" party in the 2021 general election. That alliance had the backing of former German national football player Mesut Özil, boosting it to 220,235 votes.

Around 1.4 million of the approximately 3 million people of Turkish origin currently living in Germany are German nationals, and 893,000 of them are eligible to vote in German elections.

Caner Aver, a political scientist from the Center for Turkey and Integration Studies in the city of Essen, said that 50% of those who did so in the last federal elections voted for center-left parties, which is why he does not give DAVA much of a chance.

The chairman of the Turkish community in Germany, Gökay Sofuoglu, said he does not believe the group has a future in Germany. A party that is only founded according to ethnic criteria and only concentrates on ethnic issues can only be marginal, he told the RND news network.

The DAVA founders, on the other hand, are confident. "You need around 250,000 votes to secure a seat in the European Parliament and all forecasts say that we can get them," said DAVA top candidate Zingal. He explained that DAVA would participate in Germany's 2025 general election, too.

"The huge media response of the last few days plays into our hands," Zingal said. "We are now known throughout Germany. We could hardly have achieved this even with a lavish marketing budget."

This article was originally written in German.

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