Elham Asaad Buaras

A German neo-Nazi group has threatened a Berlin-based Turkish broadcasting station twice in a week. The first anti-Muslim and anti-Turkish letter was received by TRT Deutsch on March 17, three days later the same group sent another note and package containing a pig’s head. Both letters were signed by the Prinz Eugen Group (PEG), named after the notorious Nazi-era military S S brigade.

TRT Deutsch was launched in January as the German-language news platform of Turkey’s main public broadcaster, TRT. TRT Deutsch Editor-in-Chief Kaan Elbir said letters insulting Islam and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had been included in a package containing a pig’s head sent.

The second letter read, ‘Keep building your mosques so that enough space is available for our pigs. Get out of Berlin,’ the letter said. It also described Turks and Arabs as ‘the garbage of Europe.’

In 2019, a mosque in Germany run by the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs received letters signed by PEG, insulting Islam, Turks and Arabs and including an image of a pig. Director-general of TRT TV İbrahim Eren said, “Those kinds of attacks boost our determination as journalists.”

The incidents come just a month after the far-right terrorist Tobias Rathjen, 43, shot at Turkish and Kurdish owned Shisha bars in Hanu, killing nine people before turning his gun on his mother and then himself.

The victims at the Midnight Shisha bar and the Arena bar included German, Turkish, Bulgarian, Romanian, Bosnian and Afghan nationals. One was a 35-year-old pregnant mother of two.

The shootings in Hanau was the third attack in Germany by right-wing extremists in nine months and the one with the highest death toll. Walter Lübcke, a politician who took a liberal stance towards refugees, was murdered at his home near Kassel in the western state of Hesse on June 2, 2019. On October 9, two people died in the eastern city of Halle when a gunman tried to force his way into a synagogue.