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New German citizenship laws that expand voting rights to up to 2.5 million recent migrants are unnerving even the usually complacent CDU, with one conservative lawmaker airing fears that the new arrangement could enable a potential Islamist bloc to attain parliamentary representation in the Bundestag.
The migrant voters are expected to be added to the electoral registry under plans by Berlin’s ruling traffic light coalition to fast-track naturalisation among Germany’s foreign-born population, which would reduce the residency time needed to attain citizenship to as little as three years.
This rapid and politically calculated expansion of suffrage has lent itself to fears of a Turkish-led Islamist takeover, with CDU MP Alexander Throm stating that the proposed legislation could fuel the “demographic potential” for an AKP-controlled spinoff party in Germany.
The general Turkish diaspora numbers approximately 7 million in Germany, with 1.5 million partaking directly in recent Turkish elections.
An estimated 67% of Turks in Germany voted to reelect Erdoğan and his nationalist AKP party during May’s election, prompting fears within mainstream German society that integration measures have failed and that Ankara was increasing its influence at the heart of Europe.
Relations between Turkey and the West have been souring in recent years over fears that Erdoğan and the AKP are drifting to embrace Islamic populism amid an ongoing dispute about Sweden’s NATO membership bid and controversy over the burning of the Quran by right-wing agitators across Scandinavia.
Concerns over the Turkish penetration of German politics have long been around, with Erdoğan previously triggering a major diplomatic spat in 2017 when he openly rallied the Turkish diaspora against then-Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Speaking to the Bavarian daily Münchner Merkur, Hermann Binkert of the research institute INSA said there was growing civic and electoral space for political Islam in Germany, with the government’s proposals opening up the path for a Muslim party to get the 5% needed to enter the Bundestag.
Germany has been wrestling with the thorny issues of migration and demographic change for the past decade, with the populist AfD rocketing to second place in opinion polling.
This week alone, Berlin led EU efforts to curtail the sale of fighter jets to Ankara as the two nations heavily diverged over the issue of Israel as Turkey channels Arab animosity in the hopes of becoming the leader of the Islamic world.