Nazi remarks to continue: Erdogan

Germany demands to release reporter

ANKARA, April 4, (Agencies): Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan vowed on Tuesday to continue calling European countries “Nazi remnants and fascists” if they maintain their “current attitude against Turkey”, despite repeated condemnation from European capitals.

“They don’t let my ministers make speeches in Europe (...) Once the referendum on April 16 is over, we will consider, everything has a price,” Erdogan told a referendum rally in the western city of Zonguldak.

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.

Meanwhile, Turkey dismissed 45 more judges and prosecutors on Monday as part of investigations into last July’s failed coup, the state-run Anadolu agency said, meaning around 4,000 members of the judiciary have now been purged.

Detained

Turkish authorities have detained, sacked or dismissed more than 113,000 people from the police, military, public service, judiciary and elsewhere since the abortive coup over suspected ties to U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara accuses of orchestrating the putsch.

Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999, has denied the charge and condemned the coup.

Anadolu also said the High Council of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK) had suspended a judge and an official handling a case of 29 alleged members of Gulsen’s network from various media outlets, less than a week after the judge ruled for 21 of the suspects to be acquitted.

The case included the suspected administrators of a Twitter whistleblower under the pseudonym Fuat Avni, as

cover combating terrorism, conditions in Syria and issues concerning Iran and Saudi Arabia, Merkel added.

For his part, Al-Hariri expressed gratitude for the German aid and indicated his talks with the chancellor would focus on means to fight terrorism and extremism.

Germany, along with other member states of the European Union, has been discouraging Syrian refugees from settling in Europe. well as other journalists.

Rights groups and some Western allies fear President Tayyip Erdogan is using the coup as a pretext to stifle dissent; but the government argues the purges are justified by the extent of the threat to the state on July 15 when rogue soldiers commandeered tanks and fighter jets, killing at least 240 people.

German officials met Tuesday with a German-Turkish journalist imprisoned in Istanbul for the first time since his incarceration, saying he is doing well but voicing concerns that he is being kept in jail for political purposes and calling for his release.

German Foreign Ministry official Michael Roth, a deputy foreign minister, told reporters that Die Welt correspondent Deniz Yucel met with Consul General Georg Birgelen and a German consulate attorney in prison.

It was the first consular contact Yucel has been allowed since he was arrested on charges of producing terrorist propaganda and incitement to hatred — accusations he denies. He was taken into custody in mid-February after reporting on a hacker attack on the email account of the country’s energy minister, who is also Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s son-in-law. Yucel was formally arrested later in the month.

Roth thanked Turkey for providing access to Yucel, and said Germany expects to be able to continue to send consular officials to meet with him and is working to have him freed.

Refuge

Yucel had sought refuge at a German diplomatic residence in Istanbul for several weeks before presenting himself for questioning.

Turkey’s Foreign Ministry referred queries on whether the consular access would continue to the Justice Ministry.

A deal has been worked out with Turkey in this regard. Lebanon, poor in resources, has urged for a fundamental and viable solution to the refugees’ issue, expressing deep concern their presence in the long run will cause serious economic and social problems. (KUNA)

Company opens in Kurds area:

In Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast, deeply The Justice Ministry had no immediate comment.

Roth said Yucel is only one of more than 100 journalists who are being detained in Turkey — something he said had been brought up in talks with officials there.

“Rule of law, democracy and press freedom played a large role in all conversations,” he said. “And I emphasized once more that it’s not just about one case... but about the situation of journalists in Turkey in general.”

Kurdish militants detonated a bomb which killed three Turkish soldiers in southeast Turkey, a provincial governor’s office said on Tuesday, adding that five rebels were killed in clashes in the region.

Operations

The violence occurred as the military conducted operations against Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants in the Uludere area of Sirnak province, near the border with Iraq, the governor’s office said. It did not say when the deaths occurred.

Five Turkish soldiers were also wounded in the remotely-detonated bomb blast, the statement said, adding that army operations in the area were continuing.

More than 40,000 people have been killed in the PKK’s insurgency, which it launched against the Turkish state in 1984. It is designated as a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and European Union.

Since the collapse of a two-year ceasefire in July 2015 the mainly Kurdish southeast has suffered some of the worst violence since the conflict began.

In the last five months alone, the Turkish armed forces have killed 886 PKK militants in southeast Turkey and the mountains of northern Iraq where the PKK leadership is based, the state-run Anadolu news agency said on Sunday.

scarred by conflict between state forces and militants, a textile firm that supplies companies across Europe plans three new factories — a rare bet the government can deliver on a vow to regenerate the region.

The government announced a $2.8 billion investment scheme for the area in September, hoping to win over the population with the prospect of economic revival before a referendum later this month on expanding President Tayyip Erdogan’s powers.

The Iskur group, a supplier to fashion brands including Zara, Adidas and Nike, sees its $100 million investment as showing the way for other companies from western Turkey to take advantage of government incentives and lower wages in the east.

Undaunted by the militant Kurdistan Workers Party’s (PKK) decades-old insurgency, it has been operating a $30 million cotton thread plant outside the region’s biggest city Diyarbakir since 2014 but few others have followed its lead.

“We have opened a door in Diyarbakir, creating an example for other investors in the west,” plant manager Ekrem Kul told Reuters as workers tended to rows of machines spinning thread.

Iskur halted expansion plans in 2015 with the outbreak of some of the worst fighting since the PKK took up arms in 1984, but Kul said it revived them after the government initiative. It aims to employ more than 2,000 people in the new Diyarbakir plants, up from just 330 now.

Its optimism is rare in a region where, according to the United Nations, the upsurge in violence between July 2015 and December 2016 killed around 2,000 people, devastated whole neighbourhoods and drove half a million people from their homes. (RTRS)