WUPPERTAL – It’s 50 years since the energy of the post-’66 student rebels, which sparked a wave of squatted autonomous social centres across West Germany, reached Wuppertal. The most well-established of the centres that followed, Wuppertal Autonomous Centre (known as the AZ), has existed on Gathe Street for 23 years, but is now in a fight for its life as a far-right Turkish nationalist mosque group allies with a gentrifying city council to force them, alongside many others, out of the neighbourhood. In the below feature, first written for anarchist paper Tacheles, the collective talk a bit about their history and the battle at hand.
In 1973, the radical youth center movement that had swept through Germany spilled over to the industrial city of Wuppertal. Participants from the time recall that an important motivator to open their own spaces was an event by Berlin Rauch Haus squatters. Rock band The Shards were also staying in Wuppertal at the time, and after a concert in Schusterplatz, the city opera house was occupied to emphasize the demand for self-governing youth centers.
Erdogan’s Outreach Program
DITIB, an arm of Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), is relatively notorious for its links to the regime of far-right Turkish autocrat Recep Tayyip Erdogan, from which many people in Turkey and northern Syria suffer greatly.
The umbrella organization, which runs more than 900 Turkish-Islamic mosque communities in Germany, shares a president with Diyanet, and the religious attaché of the Turkish embassy and the staff of the consulates have a say in DITIB communities. In addition, Diyanet controls the training of DITIB imams, and while The Directorate of Religious Affairs is subject to government financial oversight its Foundation is exempt from this scrutiny. Mosques abroad and a large part of the youth work of the directorate are handled by this very foundation.
In Turkey Diyanet has more employees than the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and since 2010 the agency has expanded its influence beyond religious institutions. In particular, children, youth and family work are increasingly in its aegis. Accordingly, it is not surprising that similar initiatives can also be observed in Germany. In Essen, for example there were attempts to install a youth welfare agency, and DITIB is also talking about taking on “cross-generational responsibility” on the street.
The Occupiers shared the following statement:
“As reported by the municipal electoral office, after a “benevolent” check, 1259 signatures were found not to be valid. The citizens’ initiative against the DITIB major project on the Gathe therefore does not reach the required number of votes. The city administration declared the request to be legally inadmissible just as “benevolently” while signatures were still being collected.
We see the fact that more than 10,000 votes came together as a great success that politicians cannot simply ignore. The mayor’s empty phrases about more citizen participation and transparency are far from enough. If politicians were interested in more citizen participation, they would be free to organize a referendum on this topic themselves.
This would also be urgently required, because many Wuppertal residents did not want to sign for fear of being confronted with repression the next time they visited their family in Turkey. The voices of the many people without European citizenship were not heard either.
More transparency would also mean that the city would provide information about the scandals in connection with the DITIB in NRW and position itself accordingly. It recently became known that Turkish right-wing extremists in Hamm have contacts through DITIB officials to the top of city politics.
At a festival of the local DITIB community, fascist greetings were shown. And here in Wuppertal, too, there were similar scenes. On the night of Erdogan’s election victory, wolf salutes were repeatedly shown on the Gathe.
Among other things, from people who had just left a celebration of the Elberfeld DITIB community. There is much to suggest that fascist ideas are at least tolerated in the Wuppertal DITIB. And the Wuppertal politicians did not react to the invitation of a nationalist historian by the DITIB.
Not only does he close his eyes to these problems, the Wuppertal city council is still willing to fulfill every wish of DITIB. DITIB is probably the only organization in Wuppertal that is allowed to choose its neighbors when moving.
In fact, your project will not overplan our building. The AZ could easily stay where it is. The only reason why we should give way is that the chairmen of the Wuppertal DITIB think that a direct neighborhood would not “fit”. The perpetrator-victim reversal, which DITIB operates, cannot be surpassed in terms of audacity. No one plans to take away their mosque or the right to worship.
They want to expand and everything that doesn’t suit them should disappear. The fact that the city follows its will and keeps a low profile about a possible alternative location creates incomprehension, frustration and anger among hundreds of young and old visitors to AZ.
City politics, however, seems willing to sacrifice us on the holy altar of gentrification. But in doing so, she also sacrifices peace in this city. We will increase the pressure, whether with renewed citizens’ requests or demonstrations. Whether with creative ideas, spontaneous actions or decisive interventions.
Not a day without Autonomous Center Wuppertal.”
