ISTANBUL
A group that gathered outside the German Consulate General in Istanbul's Beyoglu district protested against Nationalist Socialist Underground (NSU) terrorist organization, which targeted in its racist attacks many citizens of Turkish origin living in Germany.
The protesters, made up of members of the organization "Platform of Support for Turks in Europe", carried placards that read "Germany must face the deep state," "Racism is a crime against humanity" and "Why is Merkel silent?"
Mahmut Celik, a member of the organization, read out a press statement that said the protest was aimed at drawing attention to the attacks and urging people in positions of power to act.
"Those who compete with one another to preach human rights to the whole world have remained silent, unresponsive and indifferent in the face of murders in their countries targeting citizens of Turkish origin," Celik said, adding the authorities' statements following each attack satisfy neither themselves nor the Turks living in Germany.
The group's statement called on German and Turkish societies to stand together against the attacks.
NSU is alleged to have murdered eight people with Turkish backgrounds, one with Greek roots and one German policewoman between 2000 and 2007, in addition to committing other crimes including a nail bomb attack which wounded 22 people in a district of Cologne where many Turkish immigrants live.
A court in Munich will begin this coming Monday hearing of the case against a chief suspect plus four others on the charges of murder, 14 bank robberies, arson and aiding a terrorist group.
The "National Socialist Underground" (or NSU) trial, the highest-profile criminal case in Germany in the past decades, also brings into question modus operandi of Germany's domestic intelligence agencies, fueling doubts that German authorities had been "reluctant" to clamp down on the NSU when it staged its first attack, a bombing in 1998 in the city of Jena.
A string of revelations about the NSU and its ties since November 2011, when the cell's existence first came to light after Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Bonhardt -- two of the three known members of the NSU who allegedly killed themselves following a failed bank robbery -- have sent shockwaves through German politics, security bureaucracy and the Turkish community, and expectations have been raised that the trial will shed light on suspicions involving German state institutions.
