Most Austrians -- and most of the country's major political parties -- vehemently oppose Turkey's bid to join the EU. But it's election time in Vienna, and suddenly those same parties are courting the local Turkish vote.
So how do you meld the conflicting interests of appealing to the mainstream Turkophobe Austrian electorate while catering to voters of Turkish origin whose ballot will make a difference in yesterday's capital's election?
"It's tough occasionally," conceded Nurten Yilmaz, an Austrian of Turkish origin, as she took a break from handing out red balloons and folders urging voters -- Turkish and otherwise -- to vote for her Social Democratic Party.
Only one of the five parties running for City Hall -- the xenophobic Freedom Party -- is not fielding a Turkish candidate. Instead, it appeals to the rabidly anti-Turkish fringe vote with posters declaring "Liberated Women instead of the Mandatory Headscarf," and "German instead of `Don't Understand.'"
But with most of Austria's 200,000-strong Turkish community living in Vienna, a city of about 1.5 million people, the other parties cannot ignore their vote.
Many Turks here are skeptical of their sudden popularity -- and with reason.
"I've been here for 20 years but I'm still not fully accepted," Mehmet Akar said in strongly accented German as he stopped at Yilmaz's stand in Vienna's 16th District, where kebab stores are next to shops offering more traditional Austrian goods.
Recent EU surveys show only one in 10 Austrians backs the idea of Turkey joining the bloc. Austria tends to have little political clout in the EU. Yet it took days of intense pressure from the bloc's 24 other member states for Vienna to abandon its attempt earlier this month to scuttle talks with Turkey on future full membership.
Critics say that local politics played a part, with Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel hoping -- but failing -- to swing voter sentiment behind his conservative People's Party in the province of Styria by demonstrating his party's unbending opposition to Turkish EU membership.
In Germany, the other EU nation with a large Turkish-origin electorate, the governing Social Democratic party supported Turkey's bid to join the EU, while the opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU) objected. The resulting Social Democratic vote among Germany's 2.6 million-strong Turkish community is thought to have contributed to the unexpectedly good showing by the party that left the favored CDU with little choice but to form a coalition with its traditional rival.
In Austria, there is no such clear divide on the Turkish question. But the People's Party -- the governing party nationally -- seems to be fighting an uphill battle because of its vehement opposition to Turkish EU membership.
Turkish candidate Sirvan Ekici repeatedly canceled appointments with a reporter wanting to accompany her during campaigning. Even the rightist BZOE has fielded a candidate of Turkish origin, despite past opposition to immigrants by its leading figures, including populist firebrand Joerg Haider.
A French-Algerian man went on trial in France on Monday for burning to death his wife in 2021, a case that shocked the public and sparked heavy criticism of police for failing to take adequate measures to protect her. Mounir Boutaa, now 48, stalked his Algerian-born wife Chahinez Daoud following their separation, and even bought a van he parked outside her house near Bordeaux in southwestern France, which he used to watch her without being detected. On May 4, 2021, he attacked her in the street, shot her in both legs, poured gasoline on her and set her on fire. A neighbor hearing
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
RSS