The case of an imprisoned lawyer of the German Embassy in Ankara puts a strain on German-Turkish relations. Now Federal Foreign Minister Heiko Maas is pushing for a "quick solution".
At the G20 meeting in Japan he wants to speak with his Turkish colleague Mevlüt Cavusoglu about the case: "We think that there must be a quick fix for that, and of course I will tell my colleague here," Maas said Friday in Hiroshima. The arrest of the lawyer was "in no way understandable". When Maas and Cavusoglu meet, was initially unclear.
The lawyer worked as a so-called cooperation lawyer for the embassy and checked information from Turks who have applied for asylum in Germany. It is feared that the arrest took the files of 200 asylum seekers into the hands of the Turkish authorities.
The Turkish government risked the "good relations with Germany," said the CDU foreign expert Jürgen Hardt the "world". There is a chance "to dissolve the conflict quickly and without consequences" and to release the lawyer. He insists "that the Turkish government has no interest in an escalation."
FDP foreign policy spokesman Bijan Djir-Sarai told the newspaper that the arrest was "a deliberate attempt by Turkey to obtain information in order to prosecute and ultimately arrest members of the opposition." He called on the federal government to appoint the Turkish ambassador.
"Attack on German-Turkish relations"
The left-politician Sevim Dagdelen spoke of a "attack on German-Turkish relations". It was irresponsible that the Foreign Office had kept secret the detention of the trusted lawyer in Turkey for such a long time, said the chairman of the German-Turkish parliamentary group. The foreign policy spokesman of the Greens parliamentary group, Omid Nouripour, called for a "clear language of the Federal Government" that this step "violates all diplomatic practices."
The refugee organization Pro Asyl strongly condemned the arrest of the lawyer. "For us, what happened there is the biggest accident to be assumed," said Managing Director Günter Burkhardt. The Federal Foreign Office and the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (Bamf) would now have to disclose the way in which these sensitive data had been transmitted to Turkey and what research the lawyer had done on site.
Maas also wants to take the case of the lawyer as an opportunity to once again campaign for other German citizens who are imprisoned in Turkey - for example because of terrorist charges. "We want all of these cases to be resolved, and as long as that is not the case, it will always be something that will oppose the normalization of the relationship."