Germany turned down significantly more initial applications from Syrian asylum-seekers in October than in the previous months, according to figures from the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF).
This comes after BAMF decided in December last year to suspend decisions on almost all asylum applications from Syrians following the ouster of long-time dictator Bashar Assad, which awakened hopes of a new political era in the country.
Since the end of September, BAMF has resumed processing the cases of “young, able-bodied men” requesting asylum.
Meanwhile, Berlin Freedom Week is kicking off in the capital, a day before Germany marks the 36th anniversary of the opening of the Berlin Wall.
Read on here for the main stories from and about Germany on November 8, 2025:
Kurds rally in Cologne demanding release of PKK leader Ocalan
Thousands of Kurds demonstrated in the city of Cologne in the western state of North-Rhine Westphalia for the release of Kurdish militant leader Abdullah Ocalan.
Ocalan is the leader and founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and he has been imprisoned in Turkey since 1999.
According to the regional public broadcaster WDR, Kurds from Germany, Belgium, France, and the Netherlands participated in the rally.
According to police information, 15,000 participants were expected for a march through the city centre. Although the police did not provide an exact number, a spokesman said that several thousand people participated in the march and that there were no significant incidents.
This year, the outlawed PKK declared that its fighters would withdraw from Turkey. This step was part of a peace process with the Turkish government.
In May, the PKK announced its dissolution following a call from Ocalan, and in July, it had symbolically laid down its arms. However, the Kurdish leader remains in custody.
Ocalan founded the PKK in Turkey in 1978 in response to the political, social, and cultural oppression of Kurds in the country.
Germany: Survey shows every other person feels unsafe
The monthly Deutschlandtrend survey has looked into the debate about the perception of urban space in Germany. It found that the number of people who no longer feel safe in public has risen sharply.
A statement on migration and public safety by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has been polarizing Germany for weeks. What effect is the debate having on Germany’s citizens?
Read more about how the survey found that half of the respondents said they feel unsafe in Germany’s public places, streets and on public transport.
House explosion leaves one missing, several hurt
An explosion in a house in the town of Wolfenbüttel in the northwestern German state of Lower Saxony has completely destroyed the building, while leaving several people injured and an 83-year-old man missing.
Two adjoining houses are also at risk of collapse following the blast, which occurred on Friday evening.
Officials have not said what caused the explosion.
Two of the building’s 24 residents were taken to hospital, as was one firefighter who suffered smoke inhalation.
A fire that broke out in part of the house was later extinguished, with some 140 firefighters ultimately working at the scene.
Cutting humanitarian budget ‘strategic mistake,’ UN’s refugee chief tells Germany
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, has appealed to the German parliament to once more raise the amount of money it allots to humanitarian aid.
Grandi warned that more refugees would head to Europe unless European countries increase such spending.
“Keeping the humanitarian budget as low as it is is a huge strategic mistake,” he told Germany’s DPA news agency in a recent interview.
Grandi said the cuts to humanitarian support for Syrian refugees by Syria’s neighboring countries had partly fueled the surge of people seeking refuge in Germany in 2015-2016.
He said a similar situation was occurring now in Sudan following funding cuts by the US, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and other countries, with refugees to Chad now at risk of falling into the hands of traffickers urging them to pay them to get to Europe.
“Don’t expect the humanitarian agencies to be able to contain these crises if you don’t reverse this track,” Grandi said.
Germany has more than halved humanitarian aid this year compared with 2024, from €2.3 billion ($2.66 billion) to €1.05 billion.
The same level is planned for 2026, the budget for which is to be finalized by the Bundestag’s budget committee next week.
Antisemitism still ‘raging’ in Germany — culture commissioner
The German minister of state for culture, Wolfram Weimer, has warned that antisemitism is again on the rise in Germany and Europe.
In remarks made ahead of the anniversary of the November pogrom in Nazi Germany in 1938, Weimar said that antisemitism in Germany was “not a shadow of the past; it is raging again in the glaring light of our present day.”
He said that the fact that Jewish children were forced to go to school under police protection, that synagogues had to be guarded and Jewish symbols concealed represented “a cry — not just of fear, but to our conscience.”
Weimer said that commemorating the victims of the pogrom night was a commitment to an open, diverse and democratic society.
On November 9, 1938, paramilitary forces, Hitler Youth members and other German civilians set fire to synagogues, looted and destroyed Jewish-owned shops and abused, arbitrarily arrested and murdered members of the Jewish community, while Nazi authorities did nothing to prevent their acts.
At least 91 people were killed. In the following days, 30,000 members of the Jewish community were deported to concentration camps.
In the past, the term “Kristallnacht” (“Night of Broken Glass”) was widely used to refer to the pogrom but the name has increasingly been criticized as a euphemism for the atrocities committed.
Foreign minister forced to take commercial flight to South America
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul is to take a commercial flight to Colombia for his planned trip to a summit of EU and Latin American countries after a government aircraft was found to be defective, his office has announced.
The German air force’s Airbus A350 had been due to fly him to South America from the northern port city of Hamburg.
Wadephul is due to represent Chancellor Friedrich Merz at the meeting, which is set to take place in Santa Marta on the Colombia’s northern coast.
He is then scheduled to travel on to Bolivia for talks with the newly elected government there on Sunday, before flying to Canada for a meeting with his counterparts from G7 nations.
Germany’s fleet of government aircraft has become something of a standing joke, with a number of technical problems arising over the past few years. Problems with one plane once left Wadephul’s predecessor, Annalena Baerbock, stranded in Abu Dhabi and forced her to cancel a trip to Australia and New Zealand.
She finally made up for the cancelation several months later.
Berlin hosts dissidents as Freedom Week kicks off
Berlin Freedom Week starts on Saturday, an annual event that takes place on and around the anniversary of the opening of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989.
The series of events kicks off with a World Liberty Congress, a two-day conference that is expected to be attended by 200 dissidents from some 60 authoritarian states.
They are expected to discuss issues surrounding freedom, democracy and human rights.
On Sunday, the 36th anniversary of the Berlin Wall opening, there will be an event will take place at the Berlin Wall Memorial on Bernauer Strasse.
The opening of the Wall, which came after widespread peaceful protests in former communist East Germany, eventually led to the reunification of the two Germanys on October 3, 1990.
Big drop in approval of Syrian asylum requests
A total of 1,906 initial asylum applications from Syrians were rejected in October, compared to 163 during the period from January to September, statistics from the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) showed on Saturday.
The figures come as BAMF resumed processing “young, able-bodied” male Syrians’ asylum requests at the end of September after suspending almost all such decisions last December following the change in government in Syria.
“In justified individual cases, the Federal Office has also issued full rejections against Syrian nationals,” the BAMF said, referring to cases involving criminals and people considered to pose a potential danger.
The coalition government under Chancellor Friedrich Merz of the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) has vowed to take a tough stance on migration in a bid to take the wind out of the sails of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD).
In particular, it has pledged to reject more asylum-seekers in general but particularly those with a criminal record.
Interior MinisterAlexander Dobrindt said in a newspaper interview in September that the government intended to reach an agreement with Syria this year that would allow the deportation of criminals and, later, that of people with no right to residency in Germany.
The plans have been criticized by several human rights and refugee advocacy groups, which say that Syria is still not a safe country to return to.
Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul also said on Tuesday that the situation in Syria was “worse than in Germany in 1945” following the Second World War, a comment that caused much consternation among his fellow Christian Democrats.
Almost a million Syrians live in Germany, the majority of whom arrived in 2015-2016 as refugees fleeing their country’s civil war.
Welcome to our coverage
Guten Morgen from a bright and chilly autumn morning in Bonn!
This is where you’ll find the latest developments from and about Germany this weekend, which sees the Berlin Freedom Week kicking off.
The events,which will run into next week, pay tribute to human rights, democracy and freedoms, and are centered around the anniversary of the opening of the Berlin Wall, which will be marked on Sunday.
In other news, Germany is turning away more and more Syrian asylum-seekers, citing the improved safety situation in Syria.
And Germany’s Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul is off on a trip to Latin America and Canada.
But his trip has not started smoothly, with Germany’s top diplomat forced to travel commercially after his government plane was grounded due to technical issues.
Stay tuned to DW for all that and more in our weekend blog.