Celalettin Kesim

Plaque in memory of Celalettin Kesim

Celalettin Kesim (born July 7, 1943 , † January 5, 1980 in West Berlin , Germany ) was a Turkish communist , teacher and secretary of the Berlin Turkish Center. He was murdered by Turkish neo-fascists and Islamic fundamentalists on January 5, 1980 in Berlin, at Kottbusser Tor , during a protest against the then threatened military dictatorship in Turkey .

biography

Kesim came to West Berlin from Turkey in 1973 . He worked at Borsig as a lathe operator, was a shop steward for IG Metall and taught Turkish folk music at an adult education center. Later he was a teacher at a vocational school.

On January 5, 1980, about 40 activists from the politically left-wing Turkish Center, who were distributing leaflets at Kottbusser Tor, were attacked by about 70 Turkish right-wing extremists of the Gray Wolves and Islamic fundamentalists who came from the neighboring Mevlana Mosque and opened them with chains, batons and knives they hit. Celalettin Kesim was injured by a knife stab in the thigh. Some of his comrades dragged Kesim to the Kottbusser Bridge. Security forces arrived half an hour after the attack. A fire truck took Kesim to Urban Hospital, where his death was determined. Seven suspects were arrested after the street battle.

Commemoration

Stele for Celalettin Kesim, Kottbusser Tor, in Berlin-Kreuzberg

3,000 people attended the memorial service for Kesim, and 11,000 took part in the subsequent memorial demonstration. A memorial plaque on the corner of Reichenberger and Kottbusser Strasse commemorates Kesim. In the early 1990s, a memorial stele created by Hanefi Yeter was erected in his memory.

Activities by Turkish right-wing extremists in Germany in 2008 prompted members of the Bundestag Ulla Jelpke , Sevim Dağdelen and Wolfgang Nešković to send a small inquiry to the federal government, which also mentioned the Kesim case.

Web links

Commons : Celalettin Kesim  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Deniz Yücel : For the love of Allah . In: Jungle World , January 2, 2002.
• Deniz Yücel: The first Islamist murder in Berlin . In: Die Tageszeitung , January 21, 2015.
• Reiner Vollradt: Memory of Celalettin Kesim . In: Our time - newspaper of the DKP , January 21, 2000.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Gray Wolves | A chronology of silent power. Retrieved August 3, 2016 . 
2. ↑ Ibrahim Cindark: Migration, Language and Racism. The communicative social style of the Mannheim “minors” as a case study for the “emancipatory migrants”, Tübingen 2010, p. 69.
3. ↑ Turks in Berlin - you have your home here . In: Der Spiegel . No. 5 , 1980 ( online ).
4. ↑ September 2007 in: Kreuzberger Chronik
5. ↑ Show your mosques! In: taz , October 25, 2008.
6. ↑ Hanefi Yeter . In: District lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein
7. ↑ http://learning-from-history.de/node/4351
8. ↑ Bundestag printed paper 16/7682 of January 8, 2008  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. > (PDF; 103 kB)