She is insulted. She is threatened with death. Likewise her daughter. The perpetrator or the perpetrators know the address of the lawyer. You know her from the police computer. And when, after three years, a 53-year-old Berliner is arrested as a suspected perpetrator, a right-wing extremist known to the police who has a firearm in his apartment, when the worst seems to be over – there is a reference to the top secret residential address to all members of the Hessian committee of inquiry into the murder case Walter Lübcke forwarded, also to the AfD. In addition, the address of the kindergarten that the daughter is going to. How does a woman deal with it who has been in the crosshairs of the violent right-wing scene in Germany for years? Seda Başay-Yıldız, 45, born in Marburg, writes: “You can lose everything, except your attitude.”
She pinned the quote to her Twitter account above. As a “happy birthday” for the Basic Law. It could also be the motto for your own doing and not doing. For her attitude, Başay-Yıldız was awarded the city’s Georg Elser Prize on Monday in the Munich NS Documentation Center. Exactly 82 years to the day after the carpenter Georg Elser tried to kill the mass murderer Adolf Hitler with a bomb in the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich. With the award, the city has been honoring “the work and actions of people with moral courage who are committed to democratic achievements” every two years since 2013. Anyone who “defends themselves against undemocratic structures, organizations and developments in a very individual way and who, through inappropriate action, directs their attention to current threats to democracy” is worthy of the award.
The price is expressly not limited to Munich residents. And yet the lawyer’s commitment is closely linked to Munich. “95 percent of the people who sit in this room will never be victims of a racist attack,” said Başay-Yıldız on January 9, 2018 in Munich. It is her closing argument as the representative of the Şimşek family of victims in the NSU trial before the Higher Regional Court on Nymphenburger Strasse. And she says: “You will not be in a position to remove the name on your mailbox or the doorbell so that it is not recognized from the outside that a foreign family lives here.” Since then, the lawyer’s address and details about her family have been circulating in the right-wing scene. Your house will be observed and photographed. She will die if she is threatened, her whole family will be “competently looked after”, her daughter will be “slaughtered”. It has been like this for almost three years. The sender is called “NSU 2.0”.
Başay-Yıldız continues. Although – and probably because – she knows how seriously the threats are to be taken. Başay-Yıldız represents the mother of the murdered 17-year-old Hüseyin Dayıcık in the trial against the arms dealer Philipp K., who delivered the weapon to the racist assassin from the Munich OEZ. And she fights for the rights of the families of Serdat Gürbüz, Fatih Saraçoğlu and Gökhan Gültekin, who were shot by a conspiratorial racist in Hanau in 2020. The perpetrator, Tobias R., had previously lived in Munich for five years and trained there with a shooting club.
On Monday, SZ journalist Annette Ramelsberger, long-time observer of the NSU trial, described Başay-Yıldız as a “passionate criminal defense attorney”. “She loves this constitutional state because it prevents arbitrariness, because every authority and its decisions can be reviewed by the courts. And because every person who is accused has the right to a defense.” This also applies to Islamist threats and IS fighters, because: “Saints do not need defenders, the law is also there in difficult cases.”
Başay-Yıldız is sticking to this respect for the rule of law and their love for their homeland, said Ramelsberger. Also after Frankfurt police officers illegally rummaged through databases for the lawyer, for her husband, her daughter, and even for her parents. “These police officers cracked inhuman jokes with each other in chats and shared images of Hitler. But supposedly they did not know who they had forwarded the data to,” said Ramelsberger. “You don’t have to believe it.” Nevertheless, Başay-Yıldız was able to maintain her attitude, “an achievement, fought for with reason and passion, with defiance and, yes, with courage”. Real courage means: to be afraid, “justified fear” – and still carry on. This attitude culminates in Seda Başay-Yıldız’s sentence: “I am German, whether you want it or not.”