Eleven Turkish nationals in a martial arts group have applied for asylum in Germany after police determined they had not come to take part in a karate tournament as they said, a police spokesman said today.
The group numbered 14 on arrival at Dusseldorf airport on a flight from Istanbul yesterday, but police determined during checks that they were not going to a tournament and suspected one of their number was a people smuggler.
“Two voluntarily flew back to Turkey,” a spokesman for the German federal police said, adding that the suspected smuggler, who was Turkish, had been detained by police.
The remaining 11, compromising 10 adults and one child, had been taken to a reception centre for asylum seekers. The police spokesman could not say on what grounds they sought asylum.
In October, Germany’s interior ministry said 35 Turkish citizens with diplomatic passports had applied for asylum after a failed military coup in Turkey in July that was followed by a crackdown on suspected supporters of the putsch.
The Hizmet Movement of cleric Fethullah Gulen is suspected of orchestrating the failed coup. Gulen currently resides in self-imposed exile in the United States.
German-Turkish relations have been strained over a series of issues, including Berlin’s criticism of mass arrests in Turkey and Ankara’s treatment of the media, and charges by Turkey that Germany is a safe haven for the Kurdish militant PKK group, responsible for killing thousands of Turkish civilians since the 1980s.
Unless otherwise stated in the article above, this work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If the image(s) bear our credit, this license also applies to them. What does that mean? For other permissions, please contact us.
