Two days before the party convention in the right-populist anti-immigrant party Alternative for Germany (AfD), a struggle for leadership positions broke out ahead of the parliamentary elections in September, and the public perceives the announcement by the party’s vice-chair Frauke Petry that she will not run for leadership positions in the party as a victory for the extreme wing.
“The AfD has drifted so far to the right that Frauke Petry had no chance of remaining at the top of the party,” said the head of the far-left party The Left, Bernd Riexinger, in an interview with the Berliner Zeitung. He concluded that Petry’s withdrawal, considered moderate by AfD standards, “is no surprise.”
>>>‘Populist’ Petry Withdraws from Race in Federal Elections in Germany
The president of the leftist party The Greens, Simone Peter, also sees the same tendencies within the AfD and the rise of far-right ideas within the party.
“Frauke Petry has become a victim of the very spirits she summoned herself,” concluded Peter.
The president of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, Ayman Mazyek, sees diminishing prospects for dialogue with the AfD.
“While Petry was still willing to engage in critical dialogue on issues concerning Muslims in Germany, the remaining party leadership completely rejected that dialogue,” Mazyek said in an interview with the Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung, concluding that the AfD is “on the path to completely absorbing the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD).”
Leading members of the AfD, which is now primarily known for its anti-immigrant policies, announced that they will address the need to abolish the possibility of dual citizenship for a portion of Turks living in Germany at the upcoming congress in Cologne.
“If 60 percent of Turkish citizens living in Germany vote for an autocratic system, then they have no place here,” said party vice-chair Alexander Gauland, reacting to the referendum on constitutional changes in Turkey.
Last year, the AfD published a program document stating that Islam is incompatible with the German constitution, a notion reiterated a few days before the party convention by one of the AfD vice-chairs, Albrecht Glaser.
The AfD party congress is being held in Cologne on Saturday and Sunday with around 600 participants. Several alliances have announced counter-protests, expecting up to 50,000 participants. The chief of the Cologne police, Juergen Mathies, stated that he expects several thousand left-wing extremists, including several hundred ready for violence.
In surveys conducted by the Ipsos Institute, published on Thursday, the AfD currently enjoys support from 10 percent of voters, which, despite the fact that it recently enjoyed support of up to 15 percent, still makes it the third strongest political force in the country after the CDU/CSU Union and the SPD.
According to a public opinion poll by the TV station N24, a majority of 63 percent of respondents believe that the AfD is losing popularity due to ongoing conflicts at the top of the party, while 46 percent believe that the party is losing support due to the diminishing importance the public assigns to migration issues.
