The backstreets of Europe form platforms for terrorism

The backstreets of Europe form platforms for terrorism

He is only 14 or 15-years-old. The picture was taken in Germany. It is like he is “preparing for a murder.” It is a photo tuned to kill.

I showed this picture to Germany’s Federal Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere on my mobile phone. The minister looked at the child on the photo with sorrow and astonishment.  

“When was this photo taken?” he asked. I told him, “A short while ago, probably in Stuttgart.”

We cannot believe it. How can such “savagery and blindness” come from such a “civilized land?” This is the joint question of all governments in Europe anyway: How does this evil called the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) infect children?

Minister de Maiziere is one of the strongest individuals in Germany. He is a very experienced politician. I observed his friendship with two significant representatives of the Islamic community invited to our meeting. I saw a very genuine relationship.

These two representatives were from the Islamic Conference Aiman Mazyek and DİTİB representative Zekeriya Altuğ. While answering our questions, Altuğ made a remarkable comment. He said, “Yes, unfortunately, we cannot reach these children in the backstreets. They don't come to the mosque either.” This is the reality.

The meeting with the minister indicated that the recent bugging scandals are not regarded as a permanent issue between Germany and Turkey because there is no place for sentimentalism within the state. A very serious intelligence network is being set up between Germany and Turkey against terrorist activities of ISIL and the like. Germany will seriously support the Kurdish forces in the region against ISIL, providing weapons and logistical aid. The interpretation of the German state about children joining ISIL is that they are unsuccessful and hopeless youngsters who do not go to school. They join ISIL thinking that they will become important individuals. The ghettoization in the backstreets of Europe therefore constitutes a “platform for terrorism.”  

Caught in Adana   

What interests me the most is the kid, and the other kids, in the photo. It is the photo of children who have been stuck in “another world” in the backstreets of German cities. Most of them do not go to school.

One in the photo I showed is a high school student. His parents did not fit in anyway, not participating in any social activity in Germany. They are "settled foreigners," in other words. Naturally, they refuse the language. Children growing up in such an environment suffer from a “secret frustration.”

There is another “frustrated structure” in Germany. It is made up of public employees who have been stuck at the very bottom of the bureaucracy, without any hope of promotion, who are full of rage and hate foreigners.

Certain police officers… They develop a “racist” style within that frustration. Then, “this loser, this frustrated racist” mistreats Muslim kids.

Thus, the invitation to terrorism is out. The young person is pulled into the “terrorism trap,” as the reaction of “radical Islam” is called.  

And this is how the boy came to have that photo taken. Then he set out to join ISIL in Syria or Iraq. He arrived in the southern Turkish town of Adana. He was about to cross the border when passport control noticed him and asked where he was going.

“I am going to Syria. I have relatives there,” he answered.

“Where are your relatives? Where is your mother?” the police asked. Inquiring about his mother’s phone number, the police called her. When the mother in Germany learned where her son was, she begged the police not to release him.

Then the mother came and took her son. Of course, as soon as as they entered Germany, German intelligence interrogated the boy. Now, they are keeping his name and identity secret so that he can be reintegrated into society.  

What would have happened? If that police officer in Adana had not paid attention, I wonder who this boy would have killed. He would have killed others and later he would end up killed himself…

The backstreets of Europe have each become “settings for uprising” for these kinds of children. They feed terrorism.

I understand from the words of the German interior minister that this situation is being seriously reviewed. The solution? This brutality is no longer an issue of just one country…