Author: Hambik Zargarian

Deutsche Presse-Agentur
July 20, 2017 Thursday 6:34 PM GMT
Turkey hits back at Germany's sanctions threat over activist arrests
Friederike Heine in Berlin
Berlin (dpa) -
The Turkish Foreign Ministry has hit back at Germany, accusing Foreign
Minister Sigmar Gabriel of "xenophobia" after he warned German
citizens they could face arbitrary arrest in Turkey and threatened the
country with sanctions.
Gabriel's warning came after the recent arrest of six human rights
activists in Turkey, including a German national.
In retaliation, the Foreign Ministry in Ankara vowed to make "the
necessary response" to what it called efforts to score political
points at home through "xenophobia against Turkey and Turks."
On July 5, Turkish authorities detained six human rights activists -
including Idil Eser, director of Amnesty International's Turkey
branch, Ali Gharavi of Sweden and Peter Steudtner from Germany - at a
conference on digital security in Istanbul.
Amnesty says they are accused of supporting an armed terrorist
organization without being members.
Gabriel warned that any German travelling to Turkey was at risk of
arrest and that the country had revised its travel advice to better
protect citizens.
Gabriel said Steudtner "never wrote about Turkey, he had no contacts
in the political establishment ... and never appeared as a critic,"
and that any Germany national travelling to Turkey could suffer the
same fate.
Among the diplomatic and economic sanctions being considered by
Germany are the withdrawal export guarantees and the reduction of
millions of euros in funding to Turkey from the EU, Gabriel said.
A statement from the Turkish Foreign Ministry said: "Our relations
should not be carried out with extortion and threats, but rather on
the basis of internationally recognized norms and principles."
It added that Turkey wishes to maintain Germany as an ally.
Ibrahim Kalin, a spokesman for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
said that law-abiding Germans had nothing to fear in Turkey. He added
that by demanding the release of Steudtner, Germany was demonstrating
a "lack of respect" and attempting to "give orders" to the Turkish
judiciary.
Gabriel said that he would work with Chancellor Angela Merkel and
European Union officials to decide on diplomatic and economic
sanctions against Turkey.
In 2016, the German government guaranteed 20.6 billion euros (23.7
billion dollars) worth of exports to Turkey. Total exports to Turkey
that year from Germany amounted to 1.2 trillion euros. The EU
allocates an average of 600 million euros per year in pre-accession
funds to Turkey.
Merkel considered new measures against Turkey "necessary and
inevitable in light of the development," her spokesman Steffen Seibert
said on Twitter.
Margaritis Schinas, spokesman for the European Commission, said there
would be no withdrawal of EU funds to Turkey without the approval of
all of the bloc's member states.
"I don't see how we can continue guaranteeing companies' investments
in Turkey," Gabriel said, in an apparent reference to Erdogan's
decision to blacklist dozens of German companies it suspects of
supporting terrorism.
Local media reported Thursday that Ankara had suggested swapping
German nationals being held in Turkey for Turkish asylum seekers in
Germany it suspects of the coup attempt.
"There is no official offer of a swap," Gabriel said. "There has been
no correspondence and no phone call" in which such a swap was
suggested, he added.
Germany and Turkey have sparred over a numerous topics in recent
months, including the pre-trial detention of a Turkish-German
journalist Deniz Yucel and Germany's refusal to extradite asylum
seekers Turkey says were involved in a coup attempt last year.
Berlin has also been frustrated by Ankara's frequent refusal to let
German lawmakers visit soldiers at two air bases, as well as attempts
by Turkish politicians to hold campaign rallies in Germany.
A decision last year by the Bundestag, Germany's lower house of
parliament, to declare the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks
during World War I a genocide sparked outrage in Ankara.

Intellinews - Russia This Week
Azerbaijan sentences Russian blogger to three years in jail for
visiting Nagorno-Karabakh
A Baku court sentenced Russian travel blogger Alexander Lapshin to
three years behind bars for having travelled to the breakaway region
of Nagorno-Karabakh, APA news agency reported on July 20. Lapshin was
detained earlier this year in Minsk, Belarus and deported to
Azerbaijan, where he was tried for illegally crossing the border of
Azerbaijan and making public appeals against the state, allegedly for
advocating for the independence of the contested region. The
prosecutor had demanded a sentence of six-and-a-half years for the
blogger.
Nagorno-Karabakh has been an apple of discord between Azerbaijan and
Armenia ever since the region voted in a referendum to join the latter
in the late 1980s. The two countries fought a bitter war over the
region after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which ended in a
ceasefire, but no resolution to the conflict.
Azerbaijan has been blacklisting foreigners that travel to the region,
but Lapshin's arrest in a third country was the first time the
government sought retribution against a foreign national. It is
believed that Baku was looking to make an example out of Lapshin's
case, in order to detract others from travelling to the region or
advocating for its independence.
Lapshin pleaded "not guilty" and said that his trips to the region in
2011-2012 were not conducted in conjunction with Armenian authorities
or against Azerbaijan. The verdict came just as Azerbaijani President
Ilham Aliyev celebrated freedom of speech and the media by allocating
funds for the construction of apartment buildings for journalists and
giving a speech in which he called journalists "his assistants",
according to APA news agency.