Gundolf Köhler was a German far-right terrorist who planted a bomb at the 1980 Oktoberfest in Munich, killing 13 people and injuring more than 200 in what is known as the Oktoberfest bombing.
Kurds in Germany are residents or citizens of Germany of full or partial Kurdish origin. There is a large Kurdish community in Germany. The number of Kurds living in Germany is unknown. Many estimates assume that the number is in the million range. In February 2000, the Federal Government of Germany estimated that approximately 500,000 Kurds lived in Germany at that time.
Germany has experienced significant terrorism in its history, particularly during the Weimar Republic and during the Cold War, carried out by far-left and far-right German groups as well as by foreign terrorist organisations.
Turkey's involvement in the Syrian Civil War began diplomatically and later escalated militarily. Initially, Turkey condemned the Syrian government at the outbreak of civil unrest in Syria during the spring of 2011; the Turkish government's involvement gradually evolved into military assistance for the Free Syrian Army in July 2011, border clashes in 2012, and direct military interventions in 2016–17, in 2018, in 2019, 2020, and in 2022. The military operations have resulted in the Turkish occupation of northern Syria since August 2016.
Rawti Shax was a Kurdish cyberterrorist offshoot of the jihadist group Ansar al-Islam.
The 2016 Düsseldorf terrorism plot was a reported plot by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) to carry out a series of bombings and shootings in multiple sections of the German city of Düsseldorf similar to those carried out in Paris in November 2015. The plot was foiled after one of the conspirators, Saleh A., 25, turned himself in to French authorities in February 2016. He told authorities he was aware of Islamic State's "sleeper cell" in Germany preparing to assassinate Germany. Saleh A. was questioned several times by anti-terror experts and subsequently charged with cooperating with terrorist organization and detained. This resulted in arrests of three of the members of the conspiracy on 2 June, following several months of further investigation.
Islamic terrorism in Europe has been carried out by the Islamic State (ISIL) or Al-Qaeda as well as Islamist lone wolves since the late 20th century. Europol, which releases the annual EU Terrorism Situation and Trend report (TE-SAT), used the term "Islamist terrorism" in the years 2006–2010, "religiously inspired terrorism" 2011–2014, and has used "jihadist terrorism" since 2015. Europol defines jihadism as "a violent ideology exploiting traditional Islamic concepts".
On 16 December 2016, a bombing plot was uncovered in Ludwigshafen, Germany. The 12-year-old German-Iraqi boy, who was reported to be the perpetrator, was directed by an ISIL supporter to build two nail bombs and plant them at the local Christmas market and near a shopping centre.
On 19 December 2016, a truck was deliberately driven into the Christmas market next to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at Breitscheidplatz in Berlin, leaving 12 people dead and 56 others injured. One of the victims was the truck's original driver, Łukasz Urban, who was found shot dead in the passenger seat. The truck was eventually stopped by its automatic brakes. The perpetrator was Anis Amri, an unsuccessful asylum seeker from Tunisia. Four days after the attack, he was killed in a shootout with police near Milan in Italy. An initial suspect was arrested and later released due to lack of evidence. Nearly five years after the attack, a man who was critically injured during the attack died from complications related to his wounds, becoming the 13th victim. As of December 2023, this attack remains the worst Islamist terrorist attack by number of casualties in German history.
On 11 April 2017, the tour bus of the German football team Borussia Dortmund was attacked with roadside bombs in Dortmund, Germany. Three bombs exploded as the bus ferried the team to the Westfalenstadion for the first leg of their quarter-final against Monaco in the UEFA Champions League. One of the team's players, Marc Bartra, and a policeman were wounded, but the strengthened windows of the bus prevented casualties.
The Hanover stabbing that occurred on 26 February 2016 was a terrorist stabbing of a police officer in Hanover, Germany, by a 15-year-old girl born to a Moroccan mother and a German father. She had been raised under the influence of salafist preachings, as early as 7 years. She had been investigated by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution for preparing a serious crime already in 2014 and had traveled to meet ISIS members in Istanbul in November 2015. It was the first reported attack by an ISIS sympathiser in Germany.
The 2018 Cologne terrorist plot was foiled when, on 13 June 2018, police arrested Sief Allah H. in Cologne as he was manufacturing an explosive device which incorporated the highly toxic substance ricin. He was arrested for having breached the Kriegswaffenkontrollgesetz.
The 2018 Chemnitz protests took place in Chemnitz, in the German state of Saxony. In the early morning of 26 August, after a festival celebrating the city's founding, a fight broke out resulting in the death of a German man and serious injuries to two other people. Two Kurdish immigrants, one from Iraq and the other from Syria, were named as suspects. The incident reignited the tensions surrounding immigration to Germany, which had been ongoing since 2015, and the European migrant crisis. In response, mass protests against immigration were ignited by far-right groups. The protests spawned riots and were followed by counter-demonstrations.
The 2018 Cologne attack was an attack and subsequent hostage-taking that occurred at the central railway station of Cologne, Germany, on 15 October 2018.
On 31 December 2018 and 1 January 2019, a car was intentionally driven into crowds of people in the cities of Bottrop and Essen in Germany, injuring ten people. First media reports suspected a terrorist background. Later, the perpetrator was admitted to psychiatry and a surveyor certified that he is probably not guilty by reason of mental disease.
The Halle synagogue shooting occurred on 9 October 2019 in Halle, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, and continued in nearby Landsberg. After unsuccessfully trying to enter the synagogue in Halle during the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, the attacker, 27-year-old Stephan Balliet, fatally shot two people nearby and later injured two others. Federal investigators called the attack far-right and antisemitic terrorism.
The Hanau shootings occurred on 19 February 2020, when nine people were killed and five others wounded in a terrorist shooting spree by a far-right extremist targeting two bars and a kiosk in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hesse, Germany. After the attacks, the gunman, identified as Tobias Rathjen, returned to his apartment, where he killed his mother and then committed suicide. The massacre was called an act of terrorism by the German Minister of Internal Affairs.
The 2020 Dresden knife attack occurred on 4 October 2020, when a man was killed and another injured during a knife attack in Dresden, Germany. After two weeks, the 20-year-old perpetrator was arrested, Abdullah al-H. H., a Syrian national who arrived in Germany in 2015 to seek asylum. He had been sentenced in November 2018 to two years and nine months for supporting a terrorist organization and planning an attack with contacts with a militant in Yemen and working on the construction of suicide belts. He had been released from prison in September 2020. Europol classified the attack as jihadist terrorism.
A terrorist attack occurred on İstiklal Avenue in the Beyoğlu district of Istanbul, Turkey, on 13 November 2022, killing 6 people and injuring 81 others.
