Mehmet Turgut was shot by the NSU in Rostock on February 25, 2004. His memory is supported by a broad alliance. However, a central demand of the survivors has not yet been implemented.
“Nazis murder – the state joins in! There weren’t three of the NSU!” Such chants echo through downtown Rostock on the afternoon before the 20th anniversary of Mehmet Turgut’s death. According to police information, around 400 people demonstrated under the motto: “In memory of Mehmet Turgut – organize anti-fascism and anti-racism!”.
It is noticeable that some demonstrators are carrying self-made signs with street names: “Mehmet-Turgut-Weg” is written on them.
Mehmet Turgut’s family demands street naming
It is a reference to the central demand of Mehmet Turgut’s survivors: that the street at the crime scene be named after the Rostock NSU victim.
Mehmet Turgut’s younger brother Mustafa is also among the demonstrators. He explains the family’s wish: “It is very important because it is a thing that will remain. He may have died, but his name would live on.”
Mehmet Turgut’s survivors have long wanted the street at the scene of the crime to be named after the murdered man. But some residents are against it.
Fifth murder victim of the “NSU”
Mehmet Turgut, who was born in Turkey, wanted to build a life for himself in Germany; after two deportations, he tried for the third time in 2004. One morning 20 years ago, Turgut had just opened a kebab shop in the Toitenwinkel district of Rostock. Shortly afterwards, the perpetrators stormed the container and shot him.
A police officer will speak in court of a kind of execution “with almost fired shots” in the throat, neck and head. Mehmet Turgut was only 25 years old.
Investigations in the wrong direction
Just a week after Turgut’s murder in Rostock, the investigators at the time had already ruled out a xenophobic background. For years, investigations were mainly carried out in the victim’s environment; among other things, the owner of the kebab shop was among the suspects. It was assumed that there had been a murder in the area.
Not only Mehmet Turgut’s brothers and the Turkish-Kurdish community in Rostock suffered from the security authorities’ investigative approaches – his parents, who lived in a small Turkish village, also suffered. Word quickly got around there that Mehmet was supposed to have been a criminal. They had to move.
Only the unmasking of the “NSU” brings clarity
In November 2011, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt shot themselves in a mobile home that they had previously set on fire. The police were on their trail after a bank robbery. Her friend Beate Zschäpe then sets fire to their shared apartment in Zwickau and turns herself in to the police a few days later.
In confessional videos from the self-proclaimed “National Socialist Underground,” among other things, the murder in Rostock is admitted. In the so-called “NSU trial,” the group was found to have committed a total of ten murders between 2000 and 2007, as well as three bomb attacks and 15 bank robberies.
Still many unanswered questions
Twenty years after the murder in Rostock, the investigation continues. An investigative committee is working in the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania state parliament to investigate NSU activities and right-wing terrorist structures in the state.
Many questions are still unanswered, says Caro Keller, who monitors the investigation into the NSU murders for the blog “NSU-Watch”: “We still have to find out who gave the tip about the snack bar where Mehmet Turgut was murdered . So specifically: the support network and the enabling structures in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.”
Local council opposes street naming
The commemoration of the racist crime and the memory of Mehmet Turgut were firmly part of Rostock’s cultural memory, according to the Rostock city administration. In the run-up to the 20th anniversary of his death, she organized, among other things, a panel discussion. Large posters in the Hanseatic city commemorate Turgut.
Naming the street at the crime scene after him is still not in the cards. When asked, President of the Citizenship Regine Lück explains that the responsible local council is against it. One reason: There are residents who do not want the name to be changed.
Repeated damage to the monument
Since 2014, there has been a memorial to Mehmet Turgut at the crime scene in Rostock: two concrete benches that face each other. On plaques in German and Turkish you can read, among other things, Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The memorial is repeatedly the target of attacks; in recent years the benches have been smeared several times. After a memorial event in 2022, unknown persons destroyed the flowers and wreaths that had been placed for Mehmet Turgut.
Jürn-Jakob Gericke, NDR, tagesschau, February 25, 2024 4:17 p.m