Basel court convicts 11 men over violence at Turkish children’s festival

Basel-Stadt Criminal Court has convicted 11 men over clashes at a Turkish children’s festival in Basel in May 2022, while acquitting three others, SRF reported on Friday.

The Kurdish men were convicted at first instance, with one exception, of both assault and breach of the peace. The court issued mostly suspended prison sentences ranging from nine to 23 months. Two men received partially suspended sentences of 34 and 36 months, with six and eight months respectively to be served in prison. The court did not order any expulsions from Switzerland.

Some of the verdicts also included charges of simple or attempted serious bodily harm. The court’s presiding judge described the case as a politically and emotionally charged Kurdish Turkish conflict that had been fought “in the open street and in a reprehensible manner.”

The festival at Basel’s Marktplatz was well attended that afternoon, and the attack took place after the performances had ended. The men first shouted political slogans, including against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his policies. The court said that alone would not have been a problem, but violence then broke out first at the barriers around the festival and later on the square.

In one case, a man struck someone with a small umbrella that was “neither hard nor robust,” resulting in a conviction for attempted simple bodily harm. Another man convicted of serious bodily harm kicked a person in the back of the head “like a football.”

The court said festival participants had not remained passive and had not, for example, withdrawn from the confrontation. Nevertheless, it ruled that the incident was not a brawl but an attack initiated by the men of Kurdish background.

The three acquitted men and those convicted had attended a Kurdish congress in Gerlafingen, in the canton of Solothurn, on the day of the attack. Investigators found, however, that some of them arrived in Basel only after the confrontation. The men are aged between 26 and 40 and come from several cantons. Many testified that they had fled Turkey for political reasons.

The annual festival marks Turkey’s National Sovereignty and Children’s Day on April 23. In Basel, it features food and other stalls, music, children’s singing and dancing performances, and Turkish flags.