Germany Foreign Ministry summons Turkish chargé d’affaires

Baku. 4 November. REPORT.AZ/ German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has requested that the chargé d’affaires in the Turkish embassy be summoned to the ministry for discussions about Turkey’s arrests of opposition lawmakers, the German Foreign Ministry has said. 

“The overnight arrests of politicians and lawmakers from the Kurdish HDP [Peoples’ Democratic Party] represent a further drastic intensification of the situation in the eyes of the foreign minister,” the ministry said in a statement on November 4, Report informs citing the Reuters. 

The ministry said no one questioned Ankara’s right to respond to the failed coup attempt of July 15. “But that cannot be a justification for silencing or even imprisoning the political opposition,” the statement said.

Figen Yüksekdağ and Selahattin Demirtaş, the co-leaders of the opposition HDP, and 10 lawmakers from the party were detained early on November 4 as part of terrorism investigations carried out by prosecutor’s offices in the southeastern provinces of Diyarbakır and Şırnak and the eastern provinces of Hakkari, Van and Bingöl.