Germany’s AfD more popular than ever, so what?
The right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party enjoys record high public support, according to polls conducted by the Institute for New Social Answers (INSA).
The latest poll, released by INSA on Tuesday, indicated 23.5% support for the party, while the top conservative alliance, between the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), polled at 27%. The figure constituted a 1.5% drop since the CDU/CSU achieved victory in Germany’s February 23 general election.
“This is the highest value ever measured for the AfD in the INSA opinion trend,” the head of INSA, Hermann Binkert, told Bild daily.
The AfD has gained nearly three points in polls since the election and is currently just 3.5% behind the CDU/CSU alliance. The Christian Democrats alone polled at 21%, and their Bavarian sister party fetched a further 7% for the alliance, Binkert noted.
The INSA poll sampled the opinions of some 2,004 respondents, representing various social groups throughout Germany.
According to the pollster’s estimates, the party’s public support could reach as high as 30.5%. Other parties, however, still maintain higher estimated ceilings, with the CDU/CSU theoretically able to reach up to 42%, while the Social Democratic Party (SPD) could get up to 39.5%, according to INSA’s analysts.
The CDU/CSU emerged as the strongest force in last month’s parliamentary election with 28.5% of the vote, while failing to get an absolute majority. The party is currently in coalition talks with the SPD, which suffered a crushing defeat during the election, garnering a record-low 16.4%. Should the two forces reach a coalition, however, they would hold 328 seats in the Bundestag, comfortably surpassing the 316-seat mark to get a majority.
The AfD solidly secured second place during the election, receiving 20.8% of the vote – a twofold rise from the 10.4% they got in 2021. Despite the result, the party remains ostracized by the other major political forces, which refuse to cooperate with it, and is commonly labeled ‘far-right’ by officials and media alike.
Far-Right is a matter of perspective. From the far-left, anyone right of center is far-right.
At least Germany has found a way to ignore a quarter of its population without putting the opposition leader in prison, or having them ruled ineligible to join the election like so many other European post-democratic countries.
Turkey arrests jailed opposition leader Imamoglu's lawyer
Imamoglu called it a 'legal coup' against democracy.
March 28 (UPI) -- Turkey arrested the lawyer for jailed political opposition leader and Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu in what Imamoglu Thursday called a legal coup against democracy.
"My lawyer Mehmet Pehlivan was detained on fictitious grounds," a post on Imamoglu's X account said. "As if the coup against democracy was not enough, they cannot tolerate the victims of this coup defending themselves."
The post said President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government wants "to add a legal coup to the coup against democracy."
"The evil that a handful of incompetent people are inflicting on our country is growing. Release my lawyer immediately," Imamoglu's post added.
Politico, citing Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet, said Pehlivan was taken to a police station but no criminal charges were immediately announced.
Imamoglu is Erdogan's main political rival. He was arrested March 19 and charged March 23 with corruption charges.
Imamoglu denies the charges and the arrest triggered huge protests nationwide in Turkey.
BBC reporter Mark Lowen was grabbed by Istanbul police while covering the protests Wednesday, held for 17 hours and then deported.
In an X post Lowen said he was told he was "a threat to public order."
When the truth is a threat to public order, there is something very wrong in the country.
BBC News CEO said in a statement, "This is an extremely troubling incident and we will be making representations to the Turkish authorities."
Hundreds of protesters who believe Imamoglu because he is a political threat to Erdogan have been arrested while demanding that Imamoglu be released.
Turkey denies the arrest is political.
Imamoglu and protesters supporting him believe his arrest is anti-democratic political repression, essentially a coup against democracy.
The Guardian reported that European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said, "Turkey must protect democratic values, especially the rights of elected officials."
Hundreds of thousands of people joined a massive opposition protest in Istanbul on Saturday, rallying to defend democracy after the arrest of city mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, AFP correspondents at the scene said.
Ozgur Ozel, leader of the main opposition CHP which organised the protest, told demonstrators there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but AFP was not able to independently confirm the figures.
Protesters gathered for a mass rally in Istanbul on Saturday at the call of Turkey's main opposition CHP over the jailing of city mayor and top party figure Ekrem Imamoglu whose arrest has sparked the country's biggest street demonstrations in over a decade.
The mass protests over Imamoglu's March 19 detention have prompted a repressive government response that has been sharply condemned by rights groups and drawn criticism from abroad.
The rally in Maltepe on the Asian side of Istanbul comes on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration marking the end of Ramadan, which starts Sunday.
Read moreWith his main rival in jail, Erdogan turns Turkey into an ‘assumed autocracy’
Widely seen as the only Turkish politician capable of challenging President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the ballot box, Imamoglu was elected as the CHP's candidate for the 2028 presidential race on the day he was jailed.
Under a cloudless blue sky, protesters with posters of Imamoglu could be heard chanting: "Everywhere is Taksim, resistence is everywhere!" on board ferries crossing the Bosphorus to the Asian side of the city, an AFP correspondent said.
The slogans were referring to the city's iconic Taksim Square, the epicentre of massive protests in 2013.
Opposition leader and CHP head Ozgur Ozel told France's Le Monde newspaper he planned to make Saturday rallies a weekly feature in cities across Turkey, with others to be held in Istanbul every Wednesday.
"We believe the arrests will slow down from now," he told the daily, saying he was "ready to take the risk of spending eight to 10 years in prison if necessary. Because if we don't stop this attempted coup, it will mean the end of the ballot box."
The protests over Imamoglu's arrest quickly spread across Turkey, with vast crowds joining mass nightly rallies outside Istanbul City Hall called by the CHP, that often degenerated into running battles with riot police.
Although the last such rally was Tuesday, student groups have kept up their own protests, most of them masked despite a police crackdown that has seen nearly 2,000 people arrested.
In Istanbul, at least 511 students were detained, many in predawn raids, of whom 275 were jailed, lawyer Ferhat Guzel told AFP, while admitting that the number was "probably much higher".
The authorities have also cracked down on media coverage, arresting 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deporting a BBC correspondent and arresting a Swedish reporter who flew into Istanbul to cover the unrest.
Although 11 journalists were freed Thursday, among them AFP photographer Yasin Akgul, two more were detained on Friday as was Imamoglu's lawyer Mehmet Pehlivan, who was later granted conditional release.
Swedish journalist Joakim Medin, who flew into Turkey on Thursday to cover the demonstrations, was jailed on Friday, his employer Dagens ETC told AFP, saying it was not immediately clear what the charges were.
'Accusations 100 percent false'
Unconfirmed reports in the Turkish media said Medin was being held for "insulting the president" and belonging to a "terror organisation".
"I know that these accusations are false, 100 percent false," Dagens ETC's editor-in-chief Andreas Gustavsson wrote on X account.
In a post on social media, Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard said Stockholm was taking his arrest "seriously".
Turkish authorities held BBC journalist Mark Lowen for 17 hours on Wednesday before deporting him on the grounds he posed "a threat to public order", the broadcaster said.
Turkey's communications directorate put his deportation down to "a lack of accreditation".
Baris Altintas, co-director of MLSA, the legal NGO helping many of the detainees, told AFP the authorities "seem to be very determined on limiting coverage of the protests.
"As such, we fear that the crackdown on the press will not only continue but also increase."
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
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