AfD's Gauland slammed over 'racist' minister remark
August 29, 2017
Leading AfD politician Alexander Gauland has landed in hot water again after saying a German minister should be "disposed of" in Turkey. The remark sparked further outcry when he refused to apologize.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M. Kappeler
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No stranger to controversial comments, Alexander Gauland, deputy leader of the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD), made headlines again for remarks that have been labeled "racist" and "dehumanizing" by his fellow German politicians.
At a campaign rally Sunday in the central German town of Eichsfeld in the state of Thuringia, Gauland went after the German government's commissioner for integration, Aydan Özoguz.
Although German integration minister Aydan Özoguz has Turkish roots, she's from HamburgImage: DW/H.Kiesel
Özoguz, who has Turkish roots, wrote in an article for the newspaper Tagesspeigel that "a specifically German culture is, beyond the language, simply not identifiable."
Gauland, who stands a good chance of being elected to parliament in Germany's upcoming elections, told the audience: "That's what a German-Turk says. Invite her to Eichsfeld and tell her then what specifically German culture is."
"Aferwards, she'll never come back here and we will be able to dispose of her in Anatolia, thank God."
Leading members of the far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party have often made provocative, if not outright offensive, remarks — targeting refugees or evoking Nazi terminology.
Image: Britta Pedersen/dpa/picture alliance
Björn Höcke
The head of the AfD in the state of Thuringia first made headlines in 2017 for referring to Berlin's Holocaust memorial as a "monument of shame" and calling on the country to stop atoning for its Nazi past. In July 2023, he echoed Nazi rhetoric by declaring that "This EU must die so that the true Europe may live." In 2019, a court ruled that it was not slanderous to describe Höcke as a fascist.
Image: picture-alliance/Arifoto Ug/Candy Welz
Alice Weidel
One of the best-known public faces of the AfD, party co-chair Alice Weidel rarely shies away from causing a row. Her belligerent rhetoric caused particular controversy in a Bundestag speech in 2018, when she declared, "burqas, headscarf girls, publicly-supported knife men, and other good-for-nothings will not secure our prosperity, economic growth, and the social state."
Image: Sebastian Kahnert/dpa/picture-alliance
Maximilian Krah
Maximilian Krah, the AfD's top candidate in the 2024 European Parliament election, has called the EU a "vassal" of the US and wants to replace it with a "confederacy of fatherlands." He also wants to end support for Ukraine, and has warned on Twitter that immigration will lead to an "Umvolkung" of the German people — a Nazi-era term similar to the far-right's "great replacement" conspiracy theory.
Image: Ronny Hartmann/AFP/Getty Images
Alexander Gauland
Former parliamentary party leader Gauland was roundly criticized for a speech he made to the AfD's youth wing in June 2018. He said Germany had a "glorious history and one that lasted a lot longer than those damned 12 years. Hitler and the Nazis are just a speck of bird shit in over 1,000 years of successful German history."
Christian Lüth
Ex-press officer Christian Lüth had already faced demotion for past contentious comments before being caught on camera talking to a right-wing YouTube video blogger. "The worse things get for Germany, the better they are for the AfD," Lüth allegedly said, before turning his focus to migrants. "We can always shoot them later, that's not an issue. Or gas them, as you wish. It doesn't matter to me."
Image: Soeren Stache/dpa/picture-alliance
Beatrix von Storch
Initially, the AfD campaigned against the euro and bailouts — but that quickly turned into anti-immigrant rhetoric. "People who won't accept STOP at our borders are attackers," the European lawmaker said in 2016. "And we have to defend ourselves against attackers," she said — even if this meant shooting at women and children.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M. Murat
Harald Weyel
Not all of the AfD's scandals are about racism: Sometimes they are just revealing. Bundestag member Harald Weyel was caught in a scandal in September 2022 when a microphone he clearly didn't know was on caught him expressing his hope that Germany would suffer a "dramatic winter" of high energy prices or else "things will just go on as ever."
Image: Christoph Hardt /Future Image/imago images
Andre Poggenburg
Poggenburg, former head of the AfD in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, has also raised eyebrows with extreme remarks. In February 2017, he urged other lawmakers in the state parliament to join measures against the extreme left-wing in order to "get rid of, once and for all, this rank growth on the German racial corpus" — the latter term clearly derived from Nazi terminology.
Image: picture alliance/dpa/J. Wolf
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Politicians decry 'racist' comment
Gauland's comment, which was first reported by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, drew
censure from politicians across the German political spectrum.
"That's called racism," said the general secretary of Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) Peter Tauber on Twitter.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's office noted that Gauland's comments are nonsensical since Özoguz is from Hamburg and not Turkey.
"Ms. Özoguz comes from Hamburg - in this respect, these statements disqualify themselves," said Merkel spokesman Steffen Seibert said.
Merkel's Social Democrat (SPD) opponent Martin Schulz firmly denounced Gauland's statement, writing on Twitter: "Gauland's railing against Ozoguz is abhorrent. We must do everything to ensure that such racists don't enter the Bundestag!"
Gauland not sorry
Although Gauland told news agency DPA that he would reconsider his word choice in the future, he didn't see anything to apologize for.
"I said something and I stand by the content," he said. However, he said he wouldn't use the metaphor in the future since "sensible people" advised against it.
"No I don't have to apologize to Ms. Özoguz," Gauland said in the talk show show "Hart aber Fair" on public broadcaster ARD on Monday night.
Gauland defended his remark by saying that campaign rhetoric is often harsh and that his co-candidate, Alice Weidel, has been called a form of Nazi sympathizer in satirical shows.
"Compared to that, 'disposal' is a harmless word," he said.
Other political panelists on the show begged to differ.
"This language is disgusting and dehumanizing," said senior CDU MP Norbert Röttgen during the show.
With Germany's general election just weeks away, it remains to be seen what effect Gauland's comments will have on voters. The AfD is looking to enter German parliament for the first time and is posed to break the 5 percent minimum required to enter the Bundestag.
