TURKEY REFUSES TO BACK DOWN IN DIPLOMATIC DISPUTE WITH GERMANY
>> ISTANBUL: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey raised the stakes in a long-running diplomatic spat with Germany on Friday, dismissing the threat of an informal German economic embargo and rejecting calls to release several German citizens held in Turkish jails.
In recent days, German officials have offered unusually strong criticism of Turkey’s government. The German foreign, finance and justice ministers advised Germans against travelling to or conducting business in Turkey.
Though the ministers stopped short of imposing a travel ban or economic embargo, their comments were problematic for the sputtering Turkish economy. Germany is Turkey’s main trading partner, and more than 3.3 million German tourists visited Turkey last year, more than came from any other country.
On Friday, Mr Erdogan scoffed at the ministers’ warnings.
“I want to remind my German friends, and to all the world, you do not have the power to defame Turkey,” Mr Erdogan said at a fundraising event for a hospital. “You do not have the power to scare us with these kinds of things.”
German politicians have a long list of frustrations with Turkey, the most recent being the arrest of a German citizen, Peter Steudtner, one of the 10 human rights campaigners detained in Turkey this month on terrorism charges.
On Friday, a Turkish judge ordered the rearrest of four of those, who had been released awaiting trial. Critics say Turkey’s judiciary is no longer independent, after a vast crackdown by the government purged around 150,000 public employees, including 4,000 judges and prosecutors.
This week, the German foreign minister, Sigmar Gabriel, called Mr Steudtner’s arrest “absurd” and said it showed “that German citizens are no longer safe from arbitrary arrests” in Turkey.
The German government is also furious about the detainment of nine other German citizens in separate cases, including two journalists, Deniz Yucel and Mesale Tolu. Turkish politicians have also refused to allow German parliamentary delegations to visit German soldiers carrying out operations against the Islamic State from two Turkish military bases.
Mr Erdogan is angry that Germany has granted asylum to former Turkish army officers and other officials accused of playing a role in last year’s coup attempt in Turkey. Mr Erdogan also says that Germany harbours members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which has waged an insurgency in southeastern Turkey for several decades.
Analysts say that Turkey is running risks by not backing down. German politicians have less reason to moderate their stance, said Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, the Ankara director for the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a research organisation.
While Germany has been reluctant to antagonise Turkey because it relies on Turkey to stem the flow of refugees toward Europe, migration pressures have lessened in the past year. Additionally, as Germany prepares for federal elections, its politicians stand to gain domestically from taking a strong stance on Turkish issues.
“Turkey is playing a game of brinkmanship with the hope that Germany will back down because that is what has happened in the past,” said Mr Unluhisarcikli. “But that may not be the case this time.” © 2017