Çağan Varol

NSU complex

The NSU’s far-right terror, the failure to fully investigate it and the remembrance of its victims: research, writing and memory work.

Most works are in German; titles are given in the original.

City map of Cologne with the Rhine down the middle; two red circles mark Probsteigasse in the city centre west of the Rhine and Keupstraße in Mülheim east of it. Scale bar 0 to 3 km.
The NSU’s two attack sites in Cologne: Probsteigasse in the city centre (2001) and Keupstraße in Mülheim, on the right bank of the Rhine (2004). Base map: © OpenStreetMap contributors.

The Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund (NSU) murdered ten people between 2000 and 2007 and carried out three bombings, two of them in Cologne: on 19 January 2001 a bomb exploded in the Probsteigasse shop of a family of Iranian origin, and on 9 June 2004 a nail bomb on Keupstraße injured 22 people, four of them severely. For years the investigations were aimed at those affected themselves. Only when the NSU exposed itself in November 2011 were the attacks recognised for what they were: racist terror.

Çağan Varol has worked on the NSU complex since 2011: on the continuities of non-investigation and their consequences for society, on how police and media treated those affected, and on how the victims of right-wing violence enter social memory. From 2015 to 2017 he followed and documented the sessions of the NSU inquiry committee of the North Rhine-Westphalia state parliament. In 2023 he worked in Göttingen on the expert report for a nationwide NSU documentation centre, responsible among other things for bringing in the perspectives of those affected.

Remembrance is at the centre: the Birlikte events on Keupstraße, the Keupstraße memorial planned for years and still not built, and the planned documentation centre. In texts and talks he asks how entrepreneurial urban politics and festivalisation can depoliticise activist remembrance, and who is pushed to the margins in the process.

Places of remembrance

Three of the places where the victims of the NSU are remembered: in Cologne, Dortmund and Hamburg.

  • A brushed-steel stele between grey brick pillars with an engraved text: “In memory of the NSU attack in Probsteigasse on 19 January 2001. Dedicated to the victims of racist violence”, signed by the Council of the City of Cologne; on the left a quotation from a survivor.
    Cologne, Probsteigasse: the city’s memorial stele for the attack of 19 January 2001. Its text records that the police investigated “vornehmlich im Umfeld der Betroffenen” (mainly among those affected), turning the victims into suspects in public perception.
  • A blue street sign “Mehmet-Kubaşık-Platz” with an explanation in German and Turkish: Mehmet Kubaşık (1966–2006), kiosk owner on Mallinckrodtstraße, murdered by neo-Nazis. Sheets of paper with handwriting and a rose are fixed to the post; a square with play equipment and housing behind.
    Dortmund, Mehmet-Kubaşık-Platz: the sign explains in German and Turkish who Mehmet Kubaşık was.
  • Two memorial stones at a low brick wall, the left one with a plaque listing the names of the ten people murdered by the NSU with date and place; in the pavement in front a star with the name Süleyman Taşköprü and his portrait, flower pots beside it.
    Hamburg-Bahrenfeld: memorial for Süleyman Taşköprü, murdered in his shop on 27 June 2001. The plaque names all ten people murdered by the NSU.

Memory work & observation

  1. Observation

    Observer of the NSU inquiry committee of the North Rhine-Westphalia state parliament

    North Rhine-Westphalia state parliament, NSU inquiry committee

    Followed and documented the committee’s sessions as an individual from 2015 to 2017, as he said in an interview in October 2021.

    Source: kritisch-lesen.de

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Writing

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Talks & media

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