In May, lawyers Dr. Lukas Theune and Dr. Peer Stolle submitted an application to the Federal Ministry of the Interior to lift the ban on the activities of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has been in place since 1993. Professor Roland Hefendehl of the Institute for Criminology and Economic Criminal Law at the University of Freiburg has prepared a legal opinion on the PKK's activities in Germany that are relevant under criminal law. The expert opinion has not yet been published, but Roland Hefendehl spoke to Radio Dreyeckland on the question of whether the ban can be legally justified in terms of criminal offences.

When asked where his interest in the PKK came from, Hefendehl replied that as a criminal lawyer with an interest in socio-politics, one could not ignore the PKK. Especially in the current dispute over the blocking of Sweden's and Finland's accession to NATO by the Turkish president Erdogan, the PKK plays an important role, according to Hefendehl. He was also interested in the complex of so-called association offences according to §129 of the Criminal Code and the question of how politics is made through criminal law. The prerequisite for a ban of the PKK in the form of a "militant-aggressive action against elementary principles of the constitution" was definitely not given in his view. The PKK, he said, was "neither directed against the existence of the German state nor against human rights or the principles of the sovereignty of the people and the separation of powers.”

Hefendehl mainly looked at suspected PKK-related crimes in Germany between 2010 and 2020. The Federal Criminal Police Office recorded about 11,000 cases of suspected PKK-related offences. Almost fifty per cent of the cases are violations of the law on associations, which only result from the fact that the ban on activities exists. Sixteen per cent were damage to property, ten per cent were bodily harm, nine per cent were offences against the law on assemblies, and in other cases there was breach of the peace and resistance. He pointed out that this is not comparable to the offences that were the basis for the 1993 ban. In this respect, the lifting of the ban, he said, would lead to a reduction of alleged criminal offences. In reports on the protection of the constitution, it was also stated that "the PKK and its sub-organisations have changed over time". He argues that lifting the ban would have a positive effect.

The application to the Federal Ministry of the Interior to lift the ban is still pending. In the case of a rejection, legal action is to be taken before the Federal Administrative Court.