German police shut down 'terror-linked' leftist Turkish newspaper

German police raided the offices of a Turkish newspaper on Wednesday accused of promoting suicide bombings.

The paper, Yuruyus, is linked to the Turkey’s far-left Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C).

DHKP-C is outlawed as a terrorist group in Turkey, the US and the EU, and was banned by Germany in 1998.

It has been linked to a number of high-level assassinations in Turkey – most recently, it was accused of being behind the death of a top prosecutor, who was taken hostage by two of the group’s members and was killed during a police siege.

Germany’s Ministry of Interior said in a statement on Wednesday that it had raided locations in three cities across the country at 06:00 local time (04:00 GMT) over the “terrorist-linked” paper.

“Germany is a fortified democracy; we do not tolerate propaganda for the violent removal of the existing state and social order in Turkey, and especially not the glorification of suicide bombings.”

According to the statement, the paper had encouraged suicide attacks “as an indispensable form of class struggle,” and aimed to establish “a socialist social system in Turkey”.

There are an estimated 2.1 million people of Turkish descent living in Germany, meaning they form the country’s largest ethnic minority.

Mass Turkish migration to Germany began after World War II, when a huge labour shortage meant the German government welcomed hundreds of thousands of Turkish “guest workers” to the country, mostly to do low-paid jobs like factory work.

Turkish Germans now make up the majority of the Muslim population in Germany, where Islamophobic attacks are on the rise.

On Wednesday police arrested four people suspected of plotting “terror” attacks against Muslims and asylum seekers.

Three men and one woman were arrested after raids across Germany involving 250 people – pyrotechnics with high explosive power were discovered during the searches, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

The group had been planning to attack mosques and hostels housing asylum seekers.

The arrests came as Germany’s Interior Ministry reported a significant rise in politically-motivated crime during 2014.

The total amount of politically-motivated crime rose by 3.3 percent on 2013 figures – offences deemed to be connected to right-wing extremism jumped by 22.9 percent in 2014, while similar crimes by leftist extremists remained steady.