Germany Bans Kurdish Group After Attacks : Crackdown: Suspected radicals’ offices are raided in an attempt to curb rebels. Rights groups criticize the action.

Germany banned the militant Kurdistan Workers Party on Friday and launched nationwide raids on Kurdish-owned offices and homes in the wake of a series of terrorist attacks on Turkish targets across Europe by Kurdish separatists.

The action is the strongest measure taken by a Western European nation to prevent the Kurds’ struggle with Turkey from being fought on foreign soil, and concerns immediately were raised that the crackdown could result in retaliation against German politicians and businesses.

“Germany must not become a battlefield for foreign terrorists,” Interior Minister Manfred Kanther said in a statement announcing the immediate ban of the Kurdistan Workers Party and 35 related organizations accused of involvement in bombings and other attacks in Germany and elsewhere in Europe.

The Turkish government, locked in bloody strife with Kurdish separatists in southeastern Turkey, welcomed Germany’s move and called on other countries, particularly France, to take similar action.

But Germany’s action was angrily condemned by some Kurdish groups, which said the ban was tantamount to supporting genocide.

“Now Germany and German interests are going to attract the Kurdish people’s anger,” the Kurdistan National Liberation Front said in a statement released in Paris.

The German human rights organization Pro Asyl also protested the ban, expressing concern that the move will lead to the expulsion of Kurds living in Germany, an accusation Kanther labeled “absurd.”

As the announcement was made Friday morning, German police were raiding more than 100 Kurdish centers and homes across the country, seizing documents and equipment and taking control of bank accounts and post-office boxes. No arrests were reported.

At the Kurdistan Committee headquarters in Cologne, police removed desks, files, closets, wastepaper baskets and even the Venetian blinds. “There’s not a crumb left,” a police officer said.

With a population of 480,000 Kurds, including an estimated 5,000 members of the Kurdistan Workers Party, Germany is home to 90% of all Kurds living outside Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria, and it has become the focal point of Kurdish separatist activity abroad. France also has a significant Kurdish population.