A secret gov’t report targeting German foundations in Turkey resurfaced in 2023

Abdullah Bozkurt/Stockholm

A secret report by the Turkish government concerning the activities of German nongovernmental organizations in Turkey has recently resurfaced in the reopened murder case of an academic, putting a spotlight on the anti-German narrative employed by Turkish government officials in recent years.

The 122-page report, stamped secret, includes a detailed analysis of the German Konrad Adenauer Foundation that described the foundation’s work to help promote democracy in Turkey as harmful to the country’s national security and recommended its immediate closure. The report urged the same action for other German foundations that were operating in Turkey as well.

According to the report, Konrad Adenauer was branded as a “German state entity” and its activities in Turkey were deemed a threat to Turkey’s national unity and territorial integrity. The foundation was accused of trying to incite violence and exploit divisions, with its ultimate goal to dismember Turkey along ethnic and religious lines by helping to create separate identities and advocating local governance, the report alleged.

The report also claimed Adenauer had been operating in Turkey illegally since 1983 even though the foundation secured a license from the State Planning Organization (DPT) in 1985.

Cover page of the secret report prepared by the Turkish Interior Ministry about the Konrad Adenauer Foundation: 

The Interior Ministry investigators who drafted the report concluded that the DPT licensing of Konrad Adenauer was a mistake and wrong and that as a result its activities must be considered illegal as well. The investigators further claimed that Konrad Adenauer cannot be licensed under Turkish laws that govern foundations, associations and nongovernmental organizations because its very existence was a threat national interests of Turkey and must be shut down immediately.

The report noted that the foundation is funded by the German government, functions as an arm of the German Foreign Ministry and that its work is directed by the German embassy in Turkey. Its Turkey representatives – Wolf Schönbohm, Marx Georg Meier and Lars Peter Schmidt – were described as “so-called representatives,” suggesting that the official leadership was nothing but window dressing.

Turkish nationals and nongovernmental organizations that cooperated with Konrad Adenauer were also targeted in the report. They were branded as “collaborators” whose views echo the policies of the German state as opposed those of Turkey.

Turkish investigators further accused Konrad Adenauer of trying to assimilate the Turkish diaspora in Germany and shape the views of Turkish expatriates in Germany against the Turkish state. “It is obvious that after creating feelings of resentment and hatred [among Turks in Germany] against the [Turkish] state and army, alienating them from their core values and ensuring that Germany is adopted as their homeland, they [Konrad Adenauer’s leaders] aim to cut off their children’s ties with Turkey and subject them to assimilation,” the report stated.

Turkey’s state-controlled media ran headlines against German foundations, calling them an “axis of evil”:

Although the report obtained by Nordic Monitor exclusively covers Konrad Adenauer, its preamble and some references throughout make it clear that other nongovernmental organizations from Germany, the US and other countries were also targeted by the Turkish government. They included the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Heinrich Böll Foundation, the Körber Foundation, the Willows Foundation, the United Methodist Committee on Relief, Radio Free Asia, the American Red Cross, the Theodora Foundation and the Latter-day Saints Charities Foundation. Separate reports with similar conclusions were drawn up for every one of them.

“Although the German organizations operating in Turkey under the names of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, the Heinrich Böll Foundation and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation are extensions of political parties, each of which has a different worldview in their own countries, they are united in pursuing the same goals in our country,” the report stated.

The common goals of all German foundations in Turkey were summarized in the report: They aim to distance Turkey from its national and conservative values, undermine its national identity, provoke divisive issues to incite anarchy and create as many ethnic groups as possible to transform Turkey into a federal state with the eventual goal of dismembering Turkey.

Excerpts from the report on German foundations in Tu