German far right targets TRT Deutsch over Palestine coverage

TRT Deutsch, the German-language media outlet of Turkey's public broadcaster, has received "racist, anti-Muslim and anti-Turkish" communication from a far-right group. 

The letter, allegedly signed by the racist Prinz Eugen Group, is laced with profanities and caricatures appearing to depict Prophet Muhammed with a turban as a bomb.

Prinz Eugen Group is the name of a notorious military group among SS soldiers during the Nazi era.

TRT Deutsch Editor-in-chief Kaan Elbir says the media outlet, based in Berlin, has extensively covered Israel's oppression against Palestinians in the past two weeks. 

"For this reason, many German media institutions, as well as political scientists, have made us a target by name. But this will in no way hinder us in covering the truth. We will continue to cover the topics that German media is turning a blind eye to, such as racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia and the rising far-right. Such threats will not intimidate us."

This is not the first time TRT Deutsch has faced threats from the Prinz Eugen Group. 

In March 2020, when the news outlet began its operations in Berlin, it received similar threatening messages and another several months later. 

On all three occasions, the police have been called in, however, to date, no one has been apprehended.

Coverage of Palestine conflict

The letter comes as German media outlets continue to target the news organisation over its coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

In 2020, despite a global pandemic that brought much of the world to a standstill, Germany recorded the highest number of far-right crimes since records began. 

More than 24,000 reports were recorded in the country that has struggled to deal with rising levels of hate crime and xenophobia, a 20 percent increase from 2019.

Abdassamad el Yazidi, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Germany, recently told TRT World that the space for Muslims in public life is shrinking.

Yazidi told TRT World, "We get reports of attacks on Muslim men and women in the streets, particularly those women who wear the hijab. We see attacks on businesses, almost weekly attacks on mosques."

Many in Germany's Muslim community fear that anti-Muslim violence is not taken seriously by the country's politicians, whose rhetoric often translates into encouraging attacks on the minority.

Germany's largest opposition party is the far-right AfD and was recently placed under surveillance by the state.