Germany to pull out ‘troops’ from base

Amnesty head arrested

BERLIN, June 7, (Agencies): The German government decided Wednesday to withdraw its troops from Turkey’s Incirlik base near the Syrian border after last-ditch talks with Ankara failed to resolve an escalating row.

The military personnel along with Tornado surveillance jets and other hardware — deployed as part of the international coalition against the Islamic State group — will be moved to Jordan’s Azraq base instead, Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen said.

Chancellor Angela Merkel sought to play down the dispute, saying she “views this issue as a very localised one”.

With the decision now made to move troops out of Turkey, Berlin can now “concentrate on other points” in its negotiations with Ankara, she added.

Germany has more than 250 troops stationed in Incirlik, flying surveillance missions over Syria and refuelling flights for partner nations battling the IS jihadists.

But the deployment has become a bone of contention after Ankara repeatedly refused to allow German lawmakers to visit the base.

Ankara had first denied German parliamentarians the right to travel to the site for several months last year, angered by a Bundestag vote to recognise the Ottoman Empire’s World War I-era massacre of Armenians as a genocide. A fresh row over lawmakers’ visits to the air base erupted last month.

Merkel

Protesting

This time, Ankara was protesting the fact that Berlin offered political asylum to Turkish nationals accused of complicity in the attempted coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in July 2016. German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel travelled to Turkey on Monday to hold last-ditch talks with his counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu, but failed to sway Ankara.

After the talks, Cavusoglu repeated that “we would not like to see members of FETO take shelter in friendly country Germany”, referring to a movement led by US-based Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara accuses of orchestrating the failed coup.

Berlin has argued that it cannot deploy its soldiers in places which lawmakers are unable to visit, given that all military missions are mandated by parliament.

Von der Leyen said that Azraq in Jordan would be a new base for Germany’s troops.

Amnesty head arrested:

The head of Amnesty International in Turkey was arrested Tuesday over suspected links to the movement of cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara blames for last year’s failed coup, the human rights organisation said.

Police arrested lawyer Taner Kilic along with 22 others in the western city of Izmir, all on suspicion of ties to the US-based Muslim cleric’s movement, according to a statement on Amnesty’s website.

“We are calling on the Turkish authorities to immediately release Taner Kilic along with the other 22 lawyers, and drop all charges against them,” Amnesty International’s secretary general Salil Shetty said.

“Taner Kiliç has a long and distinguished record of defending exactly the kind of freedoms that the Turkish authorities are now intent on trampling,” he said.

The arrests proved how “arbitrary” Ankara’s postcoup crackdown had become, Shetty added.

Turkey detains 60 soldiers:

Turkish authorities detained 60 soldiers on Wednesday and issued detention orders for another 128 people in operations targeting the network of a Muslim cleric the government blames for last year’s failed coup, local media reported.

Some 50,000 people have been arrested since the failed putsch in July and around 150,000 sacked or suspended, including soldiers, police, teachers and public servants, over alleged links with the movement of U.S-based cleric Fethullah Gulen.

Authorities detained the soldiers in raids focused on the central Turkish province of Konya and 32 other provinces, the Hurriyet daily said.

Seized

Separately, the state-run Anadolu Agency said detention orders had been issued for 128 people with ties to the publishing company Kaynak Holding, which was linked to the Gulen movement before authorities seized it. Hundreds of firms like Kaynak, many of them smaller provincial businesses, were seized by authorities in the post-coup crackdown and are now run by government-appointed administrators.

Of the 128 people being sought, Anadolu said 39 people had been detained so far in an operation carried out in Istanbul and seven other provinces. There was no official comment on the detentions. On Tuesday, authorities detained the local chair of Amnesty International and 22 other lawyers in the Aegean coastal province of Izmir for suspected links to Gulen’s network, the rights group said.

Heroin seized in ship raid:

Turkish security forces have seized more than a tonne of heroin hidden in a Democratic Republic of Congo-flagged cargo ship in a raid in international waters, the largest such seizure in recent Turkish history, police said on Wednesday.

The operation was launched after the narcotics squad received a tip-off that the ship, Commander Tide, was heading towards Turkey with a major drugs consignment, police said in a statement.

Turkish naval forces, the coastguard and special forces from the eastern Mediterranean province of Mersin took part in the raid, seizing 40 sacks containing 1,071 kg (2,361 lb) of heroin hidden in secret compartments on the ship, police said. It said the nine crew members were detained in an operation on the night of June 2 and transported with the ship to a naval base at Marmaris in southwest Turkey.

EU reassures 3 bln package:

The EU’s 3-billion euro package to help migrants in Turkey will have been fully assigned to projects by the end of the year, the bloc’s envoy said Tuesday.

All the funds, part of a deal with Turkey to tackle Europe’s migrant crisis, will be fully assigned by the end of 2017, said Christian Berger, the EU ambassador to Turkey. Berger was speaking during a visit to the southern Turkish city of Hatay, near the border with Syria. “We will know exactly what we are doing with the three billion euros ($3.3 billion) and we will have contracted almost the entire amount of money at the end of this year,” he told reporters.