As German voters become accustomed to seeing lamp posts plastered with election posters, one in western Germany stands out in particular.
Erdogan’s severe face glares down from adverts for the fledgling pro-migrant Alliance of Democratic Germans (ADD) party.
The Turkish leader unofficially entered the election race when he called in August for German Turks to sabotage Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), her main rivals the Social Democrats (SPD), and the Green Party at the national election on September 24th.
Ankara’s intervention came during a year of downward-spiralling tensions between the two former allies and led to a furious response from Berlin. Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel has described it as “an unprecedented act of interference in the sovereignty of our country."
Now the ADD, created after the German parliament voted last year to recognize the murder of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915 by Ottoman Turks as genocide, is using Erdogan's image to try and win over disgruntled Turkish voters.
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If German Turkish voters were to heed Erdogan’s call and boycott the major parties, the SPD would likely take the biggest hit.
In the last election in 2013 the centre-left party gained an estimated 64% of the Turkish vote, compared to 12% for the Greens. In the same Data4U study published last year, only 6.1% of Turkish voters felt they had a political connection with Merkel’s CDU.
Professor Achim Görres, who is conducting the first ever study on German immigrant voting for this year’s election, doesn’t believe Erdogan’s call will resonate with the majority of the voting Turkish population.
"My speculation is that it will have very little impact," he says. "Erdogan is more interested in mobilizing support at home. He’s appealing more to Turks in Turkey than Turks in Germany."
The academic from Duisburg-Essen University believes the SPD could lose out on the Turkish vote in other ways, though.
“German Turks of a working-class background were traditionally very much in favour of the SPD,” he explains.
“This group of Germans of Turkish descent is getting more and more heterogeneous, especially among the younger voters whose educational level is dramatically on the increase.”
“Things are changing, and the bias in favour of the party is declining as well.”
https://www.thelocal.de/20170919/will-turkish-voters-listen-to-erdogan-and-try-to-sabotage-merkel-in-the-elections
