Following the massacre of over 500 Palestinians at al-Ahli Arab Hospital on the tenth day of "Israel’s" ongoing war on Gaza which has, at the time of writing, killed over 7800 people, Palestinian journalist and author Ramzy Baroud posted a TikTok video in which he warned:

"If you don’t condemn Israel right now, you are a coward. If you say this is Israel’s right to defend itself you are a coward. […] And if you are not using the word genocide and holocaust, you are a big coward."

This cowardice has been on full display in the overall silence of one of Germany’s most prominent ethnic minority lobby groups: the Türkische Gemeinde in Deutschland (TGD), a non-partisan, secular organisation that aims to represent the interests of the three-million-strong Muslim-majority Turkish community in Germany, the largest Turkish diaspora in the world.

Far from using the words genocide or holocaust, the TGD has not been condemning "Israel’s" war on Gaza at all.

Falling prey to the fallacies of colonial discourse

Yet the secular advocacy group did not hesitate to condemn Hamas’s October 7 attack on "Israel": in a press release published two days later on its website and which was not stingy in its use of superlative and redundant phrasing, it said that the organisation "condemns these terrorist acts to the fullest and offers its solidarity to all Jews."

TGD went on to say that their members "explicitly condemn the anti-Semitic violence, the terror and the countless mistreatments of so many innocent people" and that they stood "in full solidarity with the Jewish communities in Germany who live in fear of further violent attacks."

Addressing the situation in Germany, where in Berlin-Neukölln’s Arab and Turkish quarter some Palestinians had openly rejoiced at the success of a large-scale resistance operation against the Zionist Occupation, not at the death of civilians, TGD said that it was "absolutely unacceptable that in some places there has been a celebratory mood following the awful attacks."

Note how the prominent civil society group has fallen prey to the typical fallacies underlying Germany’s colonial discourse on Palestine: conflating anti-Israelism with anti-Semitism and Zionism with Judaism, while engaging in the double standard of delegitimising Palestinian armed resistance as terrorism, yet having nothing to say about "Israel’s" decades of state terrorism against Palestinians.

And to top it all off: exaggerating the threat posed to Jews in philosemitic Germany where they constitute the most protected and coddled religious minority in the country and where the latter’s 5.5 million Muslims are constantly made to feel that their lives matter less than those of Germany’s 91,000 Jews (a sentiment recently corroborated by a government-commissioned study which found that one in two Germans is anti-Muslim).

Supporting Hamas is not supporting Hamas

How far TGD’s adherence to the Israeli-dictated German narrative goes could be viewed in a social media post by one of the organisation’s leaders, Gökay Sofuoğlu: "Those who applaud terrorism and mistreatment of civilians must be made to feel the full force of the law," he posted on X.

Underneath this belligerent language lies the ignorance of not understanding that support for Hamas does not necessarily mean support for Hamas. Celebrated Palestinian-American novelist Susan Abulhawa solved this brain-teaser in an X post that read: "The only thing standing between Israel and our total annihilation is Hamas."

Would Sofuoğlu dare accuse Abulhawa of "applauding terrorism" when resistance is a matter of life and death? I sincerely hope not.

The secular TGD’s views, particularly with regards to Hamas and what constitutes legitimate Palestinian armed resistance, do not adequately reflect the position of Germany’s predominantly religious Turkish population of whom the majority would be inclined to agree with Erdoğan’s recent comments in which he said that "Hamas is not a terrorist organisation, but a liberation group and mujahideen which fights for the protection of its land and its people."

As "Israel's" ongoing war has become even more barbaric and Germany’s corresponding discourse even more anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant ("Israel" is not the only country that finds pleasure in meting out collective punishment), TGD has learned the hard way that when you pander to the hegemonic web of narrative lies spun by your intransigent oppressor, not having a moral backbone can backfire.

Particularly after the emergence of Palestinian-led protests across Germany and their brutal repression by the police (and corresponding demonisation by the media), TGD finally made the shift away from posting performative liability waivers of pro-Jewish solidarity towards defending its own majority-Muslim community, suddenly accused of blanket anti-Semitism on an even larger scale than usual.

But as of October 29, it has still not condemned "Israel's" war on Gaza, neither on social media, nor on its website.

Secular TGD versus Islamic DITIB

While the Islamophobic German establishment wants you to believe that the secular TGD is the only representative voice of the Turkish community in Germany, this is not true.

Far from being a politically homogenous group, Germany’s three million Turks are ideologically divided along pro- and anti-AK Party lines, the ruling party of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan: in the second round of this year’s Turkish general elections, 67 % of eligible Turkish-German voters cast their ballot for the AKP, a higher percentage than in Turkey itself.

Far more representative of Germany’s Turkish community and its stance on Palestine is the Turkish- Islamic Union for Religious Affairs, better known as DITIB, a branch of Turkey's Directorate of Religious Affairs.

Unlike the TGD, which is the darling of Germany’s Islamophobic political ruling class and equally anti-Muslim media due to its obsequious nature and secular identity, DITIB, Germany’s largest migrant lobby group representing around 70 % of Muslims in Germany, is a constant thorn in the German establishment’s eye for its refusal to play the role of the docile "good immigrant."

For this impudence, it is routinely accused of having ideological ties to "radical Islam" by the same German establishment that is now all bent out of shape about the fact that DITIB has not explicitly condemned Hamas’s attack on "Israel".

Why should it? Has the Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland, Germany’s largest Jewish lobby group, condemned "Israel's" slaughter of thousands of innocent civilians in Gaza, almost half of them children?

Taking control of the narrative

Secular Turkish-German appeasement policy in the service of Germany’s hegemonic discourse on Palestine, even as the latter is currently whitewashing "Israel's" genocide in Gaza, is not surprising: unlike ethnic minority lobby groups in the UK, US, or Canada who are better in control of their own narrative and don’t feel the need to kowtow before their oppressor, the assimilationist TGD has none of that anti-oppressive self-confidence.

This mirrors the situation of Germany’s secular-minded Turks as a whole, who over decades of diasporic life as second-class citizens in a white supremacist country, have been led to believe that the best way to fight oppression is by internalising it.

They would do well to look towards Istanbul for liberatory inspiration, where according to Turkish state broadcaster TRT World, last Saturday a staggering one and a half million people attended the Great Palestine Rally in solidarity with Gaza, and where Erdoğan lambasted "Israel" by saying that "the West owes you, but Turkey does not. That is why we speak without hesitation."

TGD’s silence on Palestine indicates that it has needlessly internalised Germany’s historic debt to "Israel", a controversial concept in itself as it begs the question if two wrongs (Nazism and Zionism) can ever make a right.

As "Israel's" genocidal war on Gaza escalates, and in doing so further exacerbates an already catastrophic humanitarian situation in the besieged and bombarded strip, it will be interesting to see if the submissive TGD manages to free itself from the shackles of misguided respectability politics, and finally express its solidarity with Palestine...

Or whether it continues on its wrong track of pandering to a rotten German establishment that hates Palestinians so much it recklessly embraces the possibility of their annihilation.