Grief, anger and calls for action after shooting in Germany

Gokhan Gultekin’s juggling act was in many ways
typical of Hanau’s Turkish community: taking care of frail parents, hustling to
work at a late-night cafe, making some cash on the side at a second job and
attending Friday prayers at the mosque across town.
On Friday, Gultekin’s friends mourned him at his
house of worship, two days after “Gogo” was killed in a racially motivated
shooting rampage that shook Germany and prompted fresh calls for a crackdown on
far-right extremism and anti-immigrant scapegoating.
“We grew up in here in these streets, ran through
the playgrounds, laughed together,” said Omer Demir, who described his recently
engaged, 37-year-old friend as hard-working. “He had to be. He had to take care
of his parents. If he had 50 euros, he would give 30 to his mother.”
On Wednesday, a 43-year-old German, Tobias Rathjen,
shot to death nine people with immigrant backgrounds in this Frankfurt suburb
before apparently killing his mother and himself. Five of the victims were
reported to be Turkish citizens. Rathjen left rambling texts and videos in
which he espoused racist views, called for genocide and claimed to have been
under surveillance since birth.
Germany’s top security official, Interior Minister
Horst Seehofer, said protection would be stepped up across the country at
mosques and other “sensitive sites” in the wake of the attack.
“The threat posed by far-right extremism,
anti-Semitism and racism is very high in Germany,” Seehofer said in Berlin.
In Hanau, German and Turkish flags flew at
half-staff outside the Turkish-speaking DITIB mosque, where more than 300
people attended the regular Friday prayers.
“The mood is subdued,” said Adam Arslan. “I cannot
accept this crime.”
The mosque opened its doors to the journalists who
have swarmed into Hanau after the attack — not a usual practice in
privacy-obsessed Germany. Members of the congregation discussed their concerns
openly and offered reporters tea.
The chairman of the mosque board, Memduh Onder, said
the community was not afraid, “because we are together,” citing the memorial
gathering Thursday evening in front of City Hall, where German President
Frank-Walter Steinmeier spoke. “The thousands of people on the square, most of
them were German,” Onder said.
In the southern Romania village of Singureni,
another of those killed in the attack was mourned by relatives. Vili Viorel
Paun, 23, left school and went to Germany at age 16 to earn money to pay for
his mother’s medical treatement, and was working as a driver for a delivery
company. His parents followed him there.
His aunt, Nicoleta Danciu, described him as “a very
gentle young man, polite as a girl, the nicest kid one can imagine. The pain
from his loss will never go away.”
Family members last saw him in the summer, when he
spent a few days and “gave us rides with his nice car,” which they said was the
silver Mercedes seen in photos from the shooting site.
Photos of Paun stood outside the family house,
candles lit by villagers around them.
On Thursday evening, thousands of people gathered in
cities across Germany to hold vigils for the victims but also to express anger
that authorities haven’t done more to prevent attacks despite a string of
violent episodes in recent years. Last week, authorities arrested 12 men,
including a police employee, on suspicion of planning attacks on Muslims and
politicians.
Some have also called for a crackdown on the
extremist and anti-migrant ideology that has crept into mainstream political
debate with the rise of the Alternative for Germany party, or AfD. A top
official in the center-left Social Democratic Party, a junior partner in
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s governing coalition, accused AfD of providing
ideological fodder to people like the Hanau gunman.
“One person carried out the shooting in Hanau.
That’s what it looks like. But there were many that supplied him with
ammunition, and AfD definitely belongs to them,” Lars Klingbeil told German
public broadcaster ARD.
Parts of AfD already were under close scrutiny from
Germany’s domestic intelligence agency. The party has rejected all
responsibility for far-right attacks, including a deadly anti-Semitic shooting
outside a synagogue and the killing of a regional politician last year.
One key question in the investigation is whether
authorities or others were aware the gunman posed a threat. Peter Frank,
Germany’s chief federal prosecutor, said investigators will examine his
movements and contacts.
“That’s one of the points that’s particularly
interesting to me in this investigation,” Seehofer said. “Who knew what.”