Academic backs off Holocaust analogy

A Turkish-German academic apologized for likening his community’s problems to those of the Jews under Nazism.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper on Tuesday reprinted parts of a May essay by Faruk Sen, the director of the Essen-based Center for Studies on Turkey, in which he argued that Turkish emigres are the “new Jews” of Germany.

“Although our people, who have lived in central and western Europe for 47 years, have produced 125,000 entrepreneurs with a total turnover of 45 billion euros, they are discriminated against and marginalized like the Jews, albeit to differing degrees and in different ways,” he wrote.

Sen later issued a statement of clarification in which he expressed regret for making the “unacceptable” comparison with Holocaust-era Germany.

Germany has Europe’s largest Turkish immigrant community, and interracial relations are often strained.