Message of Doğan Akhanlı to the participants of the “Arsch huh” event: “Wähle jon – Demokratie braucht keine Alternative!” on 27.08. in Cologne:

“Dear friends!

Because of my arrest in Spain due to Turkey’s intervention, I am a bit tired and exhausted right now, but despite the current threat, my strength against racism and discrimination has not diminished. On the contrary!

When I fled to Cologne at the end of 1991, I got to know two different Germanys within a very short time. I witnessed the racist attacks in Hoyerswerda and in Rostock-Lichtenhagen, and at the same time I experienced November 9, 1992. I was one of the 100,000 people on Chlodwigplatz in Cologne who demonstrated “against racism and neo-Nazis”. An event I will never forget. In the one Germany, the residual extermination soul of the Nazi past still lives on. The other Germany is characterized by liveliness and change because it is coming to terms with its historical history of violence.

At that time, I was convinced that there would never be room for racists and nationalists in Germany again. Until the unmasking of the NSU.

I realized how many immigrants feel that they are not safe in this country. Unfortunately, because the state failed to prosecute the perpetrators, this feeling has not diminished. I too was shocked because I would not have thought so much incompetence or unwillingness possible.

Nevertheless, we must not faint. We must not resign ourselves. It remains the same: racists have no place among us, no matter what passport they have. Inhuman ideologies that want to make enemies out of strangers have no place among us.

We must not remain silent when the Holocaust is trivialized. We must not remain silent when the Armenian genocide is denied and the victims of colonial history are concealed. Together we must create a living memorial landscape and fight for open and honest coexistence within it.

When the prophets of destruction and their accomplices announce that they are back, we must stand up and say: We are there too!

“Ass huh – Zäng ussenander!” Kaldırın Kıçınızı!”