Tension crackled yesterday as the Turkish Prime Minister strode in to the charred, wrecked home where nine of his countrymen burned and choked to death.

“The pain is great,” said Recep Tayyip Erdogan, swallowing hard. The crowd of more than 2,000 Turks fell silent. They had travelled from across western Germany to mourn the dead — five of them children — but also to exchange information about what they believe to have been a neo-Nazi arson attack.

“The pain is great,” he repeated and the crowd, peering through a wire fence strung with teddy bears, children's drawings, red carnations and Turkish flags, started to nod.

“And if it hadn't been for the energetic involvement of the German police and fire services that pain would have been even greater,” he continued.

Mr Erdogan, in other words, was calling on the three million Turks in Germany to stay calm and not to take to the streets. For the past week anger has been rumbling in the community, stoked in part by the ham-fisted attempted of Kurt Beck, the Prime Minister of Rhineland Palatinate, to rule out arson as a reason for the devastating blaze last Sunday. The Turkish suspicion was that the Germans were about to mount a cover-up. And that the rescue services had not rushed to help the Turks.

As a result relations between Turkey and Germany are at the worst level since 1993 when a Turkish house in Germany was torched by far-right thugs. A few days ago a Turk in Ludwigshafen beat up a German fireman; other members of the rescue team have been spat upon.

“Believe me when I say that we tried as hard to save the people in this house as we would have done our own citizens,” said a pale, drained-looking Mr Beck. A handful of young Turks at the back of the crowd started to whistle as a sign of contempt.

For the most part the Turks stayed silent. For their own Prime Minister they applauded and cheered and it became clear yesterday that, if this crowd was representative of the Turkish community in Germany, there was no risk of imminent race riots.

“Let us all help to strengthen the friendship with Germany,” said Mr Erdogan, and then turning to the Turkish press, added: “I implore you not to use big, sensationalist headlines that will upset the peace between our countries. It could be that we have different religions, languages and we are different peoples — but we are all humans.”

One rumour mill is active among the native Germans of Ludwigshafen, desperate to demonstrate that this is not a city of neo-Nazi conspiracies. Locals - taxi drivers, greengrocers, the woman running the town museum - say that the Turkish families might have been tapping in to the electricity grid, getting their power free. That would have opened up the possibility of loose wires sparking the fire. Police sources say this is improbable.

The fact is that many Turks — not just in Ludwigshafen — live in a parallel world, receiving their information from Turkish television and internet sites rather than the German media. Since the Turkish tabloids have emphasised every possible neo-Nazi lead, Turks have become deeply sceptical about the German authorities.

Mr Erdogan travels to Berlin today to meet Angela Merkel, the Chancellor. He is hoping that the fire will prompt a more determined government attempt to integrate Turks in to German society.

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