After a week of relentless attacks, the governor of Bavaria has insisted Islamist terror is dealt with as the Vice President of Germany’s AfD party demanded a Donald Trump-style temporary halt on asylum for Muslim migrants.
Horst Seehofer, the leader of Germany’s largest state, set himself on a collision course with pro-open borders German Chancellor Angela Merkel when he said Germans are “riled up” and “full of fear” at a press conference yesterday after his state suffered four Islamist-inspired terror attacks in less than a week.
Mr. Seehofer, the leader of Merkel’s sister party the Bavarian Christian-Democrats, said Germany must “do whatever is necessary to protect our citizens”.
Continuing: “What we have here is an entirely new dimension of terrorism, the Islamist-minded terrorism, and we have to have intense discussions on this challenge in Bavaria and in Germany as well as prevent and repress it.
“That is the big challenge we face, and therefore any attempts to contextualise the problem are inappropriate.
“Every attack, every act of terrorism is one too many. Islamic terrorism has arrived in Germany and the people are rightly expecting us to stand up to this courageously,” he said.
Other German politicians are even more impatient and aggrieved.
The Vice President of the right-wing, eurosceptic Alternative for Germany (AfD) party demanded today a temporary end to the granting of asylum to Muslims in Germany, in a clear echo of the policies of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
According to Die Welt, Alexander Gauland said: “We can no longer afford, for safety reasons, to let more uncontrolled Muslim immigration into Germany.”
He argued that “the right of asylum for Muslims should be suspended immediately until all applicants residing in Germany are registered, monitored and their applications are processed”.
At the beginning of this week of terror, Bavarian Governor Mr. Seehofer also called for an “immediate” halt to Turkey’s EU membership negotiations.
He said talks should stop “now that Turkey breaks down the rule of law” – following the failed military coup in Turkey and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s subsequent authoritarian crackdown.
He said: “Turkey is no any longer a democratic state” and insisted that “unrestricted visa freedom would mean importing Turkish national problems to Germany”, Die Welt reported last Friday.
Mr. Seehofer’s party is the sister party of the Christian Democratic Union of Angela Merkel, who has long advocated Turkish membership of the EU and encouraged Germany’s open door policy to 1.5 million unvetted migrants from the Middle East last year.
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