January 9 – German prosecutors have opened an attempted murder investigation after a German-Turkish player known for his pro-Kurdish views was shot at on a motorway.
Deniz Naki, who has been convicted in Turkey for supporting Kurdish separatists, claims he was attacked by Turkish intelligence in an assassination attempt linked to his criticism of the regime of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Naki, a former midfielder for FC St Pauli, a second division side from Hamburg, escaped injury when his car came under fire in a drive-by shooting on Sunday.
Naki, 28, was born in Germany but now plays for Amedspor, a second division side in the Kurdish city of Diyarbakir. He was given an 18-month suspended sentence in April for “terrorist propaganda” in support of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Naki told Germany’s Die Welt newspaper that that two shots had hit his car on the motorway near his home town of Dueren in western Germany as he was returning late in the evening from visiting a friend. He said he had frequently received threatening messages on social media.
“I could have died,” Naki told the newspaper. “It was so close. I was scared to death. I always knew that something like this could happen, but I would never have thought it could happen in Germany.”
He said the shots were fired from a black station wagon that was diagonally behind him, and two bullets struck his car. He said he would not let the incident stop him speaking out against the Turkish government.
Sahra Wagenknecht, parliamentary leader of Germany’s radical Left party, said Berlin should investigate whether “Turkish death squads are active in Germany” and demanded a decisive crackdown on “criminal activities by Erdogan supporters in Germany”.
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