Ankara summons German ambassador over ‘misbehavior’ against Turkish deputy parliament speaker

Sevil Erkuş - ANKARA

AA photo

The Turkish Foreign Ministry summoned German Ambassador to Turkey Martin Erdmann on Dec. 7 to convey Ankara’s reaction after airport police in Cologne temporarily held Turkish Parliament Deputy Speaker Ayşenur Bahçekapılı due to a problem with her passport, diplomatic sources have told the Hürriyet Daily News. 

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan slammed Germany after the incident.

“You take and host terrorists but you make the deputy parliamentary speaker of this country wait for hours at the airport. Shouldn’t we do the same to them? And then they call Erdoğan a dictator!” he said in an address to local neighborhood heads on Dec. 7.  

Erdoğan also threatened Berlin with “retaliation” if the officers involved are not probed. 

“Turkey will have to retaliate in kind if the necessary actions are not taken against the officers involved,” he added, noting that “many terrorists freely roam around Europe” despite the fact that Turkey has demanded their deportation. 

“Whether or not they deport. We will continue to put our own tactics in place,” Erdoğan said. 

The incident he was referring to took place at Cologne Airport as Bahçekapılı and others were returning to Turkey on Dec 5. After her bag and diplomatic passport were stolen in Cologne, Bahçekapılı obtained a temporary passport from the Turkish Consulate, but the police did not allow her to travel with that document and held her in custody at the airport police station. 

“They did not accept the temporary passport. Although I told them that I am deputy parliamentary speaker and an MP, they said ‘It’s not our concern.’ Then they took me and my sister to the police station at the airport. They kept us there for 45 minutes although we told them that our plane was about to take off,” Bahçekapılı told daily Hürriyet after the incident

“I was bursting with anger. ‘Is this your EU? We don’t want such an EU,’ I shouted. Police threatened us to keep quiet. Only then could we board the plane,” she added. 


Parliament condemns too

The Turkish Parliament has also condemned the German police in a statement issued with the participation of all parties. 

“This behavior against the deputy speaker of Turkish Grand National Assembly is unacceptable,” read the statement issued on Dec. 7.