Erdoğan’s AKP Party to Participate in German Elections Through Surrogate

On 29 Jan­u­ary 2024, EURACTIV report­ed that the Turk­ish AKP par­ty, led by Pres­i­dent Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, plans to par­tic­i­pate in the Euro­pean Elec­tions in Ger­many through its affil­i­ate, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Alliance for Diver­si­ty and Awak­en­ing (Dava). This move, high­light­ed by the pres­ence of four can­di­dates with ties to Erdoğan’s AKP or its sup­port orga­ni­za­tions, has raised con­cerns among high-rank­ing Ger­man politi­cians about the poten­tial expan­sion of Turk­ish influ­ence with­in the EU. Fig­ures such as Green Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Cem Özdemir and CDU Deputy Leader Jens Spahn have crit­i­cized the devel­op­ment, indi­cat­ing it could wors­en the polit­i­cal cli­mate in Ger­many. The Ger­man polit­i­cal land­scape faces fur­ther frag­men­ta­tion with the influx of new par­ties, includ­ing Dava, due to the Euro­pean Elec­tion’s absence of a 5% elec­toral thresh­old. This sce­nario mir­rors the 2019 Euro­pean Elec­tion, where small par­ties achieved rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment despite min­i­mal nation­al sup­port. The par­tic­i­pa­tion of these new par­ties is seen by some, like FDP’s Marie-Agnes Strack-Zim­mer­mann, as a chal­lenge to Euro­pean uni­ty amid increas­ing for­eign and domes­tic pressures.

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