Many Turks seeking asylum in Germany

‘Voters in EU should defy grandchildren of Nazism’

BERLIN, April 3, (Agencies): At least 262 Turkish diplomats and army personnel have applied for asylum in Germany since a failed July coup that Turkey blames on supporters of a US-based cleric, a spokeswoman for the German Interior Ministry said on Monday.

The number of Turkish citizens seeking asylum in Germany rose dramatically after the failed coup and Turkey has warned its NATO ally to reject applications from soldiers it suspects of having links to exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen.

Annegret Korff, a German Interior Ministry spokeswoman, said 151 applicants had diplomatic passports and 111 had no-fee passports, which are issued by governments to military personnel and other civil servants who are on official travel assignments.

She did not specify whether the 262 also included diplomats’ families, who would also have diplomatic status.

Statistically

“Those figures are not actually statistically sound because they are based on the voluntary statements of the asylum applicants,” Korff told a regular government news conference, suggesting the real number could be higher.

Tensions are running high between the two NATO allies ahead of a referendum in Turkey next month that proposes expanding the powers of President Tayyip Erdogan. Germany infuriated Turkey by cancelling several campaign rallies by Turkish ministers on German soil, drawing accusations from Turkey of “Nazi” tactics.

The German government said in December that 5,166 Turkish citizens had applied for asylum in the first 11 months of last year, compared with 1,767 applications received in the whole of 2015. Some 80 percent of the applicants were ethnic Kurds.

Turkish Defence Minister Fikri Isik urged Germany in January to reject asylum applications from 40 mostly highranking former soldiers suspected by Ankara of having links to the coup.

Following the July 15 coup, Turkey has arrested more than 40,000 people

judiciary’s councils and courts. Currently, the most senior judges automatically get the top jobs.

“We fully respect and appreciate the legislative branch and believe that it has a discretionary authority ... however, this discretionary authority doesn’t mean in any way the presence of an authoritarian power,” Samir al-Bahy, deputy head of Egypt’s State Council, told the news conference. The State Council is one of Egypt’s judicial authorities. and sacked or suspended more than 100,000 in the military, civil service and private sector.

Germany’s Foreign Minister thanked his Turkish counterpart Monday for granting consular access to a GermanTurkish journalist detained since January, the first positive development between the two NATO partners after weeks of acrimony.

The detention of Deniz Yucel on charges of producing terrorist propaganda and incitement to hatred was one of several issues that have caused friction between Ankara and Berlin in recent months.

Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said that he had pressed Germany’s case for diplomatic access to Yucel in oneon-one talks with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu on the sidelines of a NATO meeting on Friday, and that Cavusoglu came through, telling him verbally on the weekend it would be granted.

“This morning Turkey also officially confirmed that we will receive access to Deniz Yucel tomorrow finally so that we can determine for ourselves his wellbeing after difficult days in custody,” Gabriel said in a statement.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has alleged the reporter for Die Welt was a German spy and a “representative” of the Kurdish PKK rebel group — all of which the newspaper denies.

Germany has pressed repeatedly for consular access to Yucel, something Turkey was not obliged to provide because the reporter is also a Turkish citizen. In comments last week, Gabriel slammed Turkey for preventing access, saying “one must almost assume that Yucel is serving the Turkish leadership as a political football in a dirty election campaign.”

Yucel’s case is just one of several spats to arise between Ankara and Berlin over the past year — at a time when Germany and the rest of the European Union are looking to Turkey for its support in the fight against the Islamic State

Judges believe the draft law is tailored to prevent specific judges from presiding over top courts and may be linked to a pair of high-profile rulings that annulled an agreement to transfer two strategic Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia signed a year ago. President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and his government insist the islands are Saudi, but the agreement sparked the largest anti-government street demonstrations since el-Sisi took office in 2014, when thousands took to and in helping slow and regulate the flow of migrants into Europe.

Turkish officials’ attempts to rally support among their citizens living in Germany last month for a referendum over whether to expand Erdogan’s power caused widespread irritation in Germany, and several of their public events were canceled. That caused Erdogan to accuse German officials of acting like Nazis which, in turn, prompted strong condemnation of the Turkish president’s words from Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Eligible

There are some 3 million people of Turkish origin in Germany, almost half of whom were eligible to vote in the referendum. There was further sniping between the two governments last week, after German officials revealed that Turkey’s foreign intelligence agency MIT had provided them a list of suspected supporters of a US-based cleric, who Turkey claims was behind last year’s failed coup.

Turkey asked Germany to put the people under surveillance, but instead Germany warned those on the list, which reportedly included a member of German Parliament, they were under Turkish suspicion.

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim called the German move “not ethical.”

A German parliament resolution labeling the early-20th century killing of Armenians in Turkey as “genocide” and an offensive poem about Erdogan by a German comic have also soured relations between the two countries.

President Tayyip Erdogan on Monday called on Turkish voters in Europe to defy the “grandchildren of Nazism” and back a referendum this month on changing the constitution, comments likely to cause further ire in Europe.

Erdogan has repeatedly lashed out at European countries, including Germany, in campaigning for the referendum, accusing them of “Nazi-like” tactics for banning his ministers from speaking to rallies of Turkish voters abroad.

the streets in April last year. Hundreds were detained, but were mostly released later. (AP)

German, Lebanese ties solid:

The German-Lebanese relations date back to 1953 when Germany appointed its first envoy in Lebanon. The Lebanon Government then sent an ambassador to the European country.

Recognizing East Germany (German Democratic Republic) in 1973, Lebanon also appointed an envoy in East Berlin. After the reunion of East and West Germany in 1990, the embassy was closed. In 2000, it was moved to Bonn, formerly capital of the once Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), then to the new capital of Berlin.

According to the Germany Foreign Ministry, state visits by Lebanese officials to Berlin over the past decade have contributed a lot to promoting bilateral ties.

Former Lebanese president Michel Suleiman paid an official visit to Berlin in 2008, and former Prime Minister Fuad Seniora visited Germany in 2006, 2007 and 2008. Premier Naguib Miqati visited the country in 2012. (KUNA)

3 Palestinians injured:

Three Palestinians have been wounded as a result of an explosion in a military site west of Rafah, south of Gaza City, medical sources said Monday. Spokesman for the Palestinian Ministry of Health, Ashraf Al-Qadra, said that three Palestinians were injured as a result of a blast in Tal Al-Sultan area, west of Rafah city in the southern Gaza Strip. Al-Qadra said that the injured were taken to Abu Yusuf Al-Najjar Hospital for treatment.(KUNA)