BERLIN, Feb. 8 (UPI) -- A house fire in Germany that killed nine Turkish tenants has sparked serious tensions between German officials and the country's Turkish community, which suspects a racial motive behind the blaze.
It's a shocking image: A baby in a striped jumpsuit is being dropped from the third story of a burning brownstone house. His uncle is looking on as the baby boy, his arms outstretched and eyes closed, is falling toward the concrete ground. The story behind the gruesome image has a happy ending -- a police officer managed to catch baby boy Onur a split second before he was due to hit the pavement. Onur survived, but the tragedy surrounding the fire in the apartment house in Ludwigshafen, a western German city, continues unabated.
The Turkish community has been quick to suspect arson and a neo-Nazi crime behind the fire; two Turkish families inhabited the building and all nine victims were Turkish citizens.
Sunday's fire, which has been described as the worst in western Germany since World War I, injured some 60 people and brought back memories of the early 1990s, when a series of blazes set by neo-Nazis killed several foreigners.
The most infamous incident happened in 1993 in Solingen, in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, when neo-Nazis set fire to a building, killing an elderly Turkish lady and two Turkish girls. The incident marked the height of a series of neo-Nazi incidents and sparked riots as well as peace marches against resurging neo-Nazism.
The Turkish media in Turkey and in Germany -- nearly 3 million ethnic Turks live in the country of 83 million -- has linked the latest incident to the one in Solingen, and even Ankara has voiced its concern.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan asked on Turkish television: "After the racist acts of violence in the past the question arises: Was this fire an accident or not?"
Two girls ages 8 and 9 are reported to have seen a man light a match and throw it into the hallway of a building, while other reports quote tenants who have been threatened.
Officials in Germany have launched what they vowed is a thorough investigation (in which Turkish experts are taking part), but warned of overrating speculation surrounding the fire; on Friday they repeated what they have said over the past few days: So far, there is no proof of arson. The incident has nevertheless managed to raise fear and anger among Germany's Turkish community.
"The growing xenophobia and these latest fires have made (Turks in Germany) incredibly nervous," Kerem Caliskan, the head of the European edition of Turkish mass daily Hurriyet, told the online version of German news magazine Der Spiegel. "They feel threatened when they leave for work or when they say goodbye to their kids before school. They tell us that every day in hundreds of e-mails."
German and Turkish politicians have since recognized the potential for social unrest that is still smoldering in the ashes of the Ludwigshafen building.
On Thursday, Erdogan visited the site of the fire to offer condolences and urge caution among Germany's Turkish community.
"Our grief is great; as a nation, our grief is great. But our German friends whom I have spoken to are also grieving," Erdogan told several thousand people, mostly Turks, gathered at the ruins of the building.
Kurt Beck, state governor of Rhineland-Palatinate, underscored that the victims' ethnic background played no role in the sadness and shock felt in Germany.
"I assure you that we are mourning as deeply and intensively as when we would had the victims been German citizens," Beck said. "We will do everything in our power to get to the bottom of this terrible accident."
Erdogan also countered claims of the Turkish media, which reported that German fire fighters and police failed to react swiftly to emergency calls.
"If it hadn't been for the work of the police or the firefighters, the losses would have been greater," he said.
Indeed, the Berliner Zeitung newspaper reported that the first firefighters were at the scene only two minutes after the first emergency call was placed, with just two more minutes passing until several large firefighting vehicles with water cannons arrived.
Yet Turks in Germany are also unsettled by a recent state election campaign from a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives, Roland Koch; the state premier of Hesse blamed a recent upsurge in youth crime on immigrants, and has been accused of fishing for votes from the right wing of the political agenda.
And Caliskan, the journalist, even said Merkel is partly to blame for the heated atmosphere in Germany.
"Chancellor Angela Merkel together with French President Nicolas Sarkozy tries to push Turkey out of Europe," he said. "This discrimination is the main reason for all the turbulences and conflicts between Turks and Germans."
Germany has had trouble integrating its predominantly Muslim immigrant community (the majority of whom are ethnic Turks); social tensions have moreover been smoldering under the surface since a Turkish and a Greek youth nearly killed a pensioner in a Munich subway station after he had asked the pair to obey a smoking ban.
Everyone involved hopes that the fire does not turn out to be a racially motivated crime; because if that was the case, security officials fear that mass demonstrations or even riots may take the streets in otherwise sleepy Ludwigshafen.
