Are Turkey and Germany really about barter?
The German media has started to talk about negotiations. The German public broadcaster ARD has directly asked the German premier if there are negotiations with Turkey. Will permission be given to German parliamentarians to visit to the base in Konya on the condition of the extradition of the members of Fethullahist Terrorist Organization (FETÖ)?
Merkel said she had not come across such a secret request in bilateral talks and added she would reject it if she did.
“The decision for extradition is a judicial decision; it is not subject to negotiation,” was the message repeated by Merkel.
We have made it worse by chasing them from İncirlik. Still, they left in grace and while leaving they thanked Turkey for hosting them.
“Let’s close the İncirlik issue now; let’s leave it behind. Let’s look ahead,” they said.
Then we created difficulty for the German soldiers to visit Konya. They kept reacting with the same calm attitude. On the issue of the extradition of the FETÖ members, they are not open to give and take, to accepting negotiations, or to barter.
“This is in the hands of the judiciary. It is not in the hands of the government. We cannot interfere,” is their response each time.
Don’t be surprised if they start saying the Büyükada incident had been done to force them to negotiate.
To recall—police raided the joint meeting of human rights organizations, which included Amnesty International. Some 10 human rights defenders were detained and six of them were arrested on Tuesday, July 18. One of them is the German citizen Peter Steudtner.
It won’t take long for German media to have comments such as “look the judiciary is independent here too,” as if Steudtner has been arrested for ridiculous and phony reasons even though his innocence is known. The purpose of his arrest is to use him as barter.
There is currently a restriction in the dossier. Once lifted, the world will see if it is empty or if it has shocking documents and evidence. Since the evidence has not been made public, the world has been reacting for the past two weeks that the accusations are ridiculous and baseless.
In fact, the U.S. ambassador to Ankara John Bass posed with a banner in his hand asking for the release of human rights defenders.
I hope the evidence will not be limited to what has been published (in papers). Amnesty International’s call for “urgent action,” for instance. This cliché expression found in the phone of a suspect is apparently the same thing with the word “action” used by a terror organization and so, it was nearly considered as proof to the link between the two.
In addition, since the call for action is done in support of the educators on hunger strike and since they were accused of being a member of a terror organization in the 75th day of their strike, it has apparently been concluded from this that there is a unity of both for action and purpose between Amnesty International and this terror organization.
The foreigners are as the name suggest—of foreign origin. Since it is impossible to assume they cannot act outside the purpose of helping terror organizations due to their position and origin, it was this point that led to their investigation for spying as a potential crime.
If the speculation that all this is being done for a negotiation are true, when it is understood sooner or later, this will be no different than shooting our foot. It will harm the credibility of FETÖ cases. It will do great harm to the struggle against FETÖ.
It is clear what to do to prevent such speculation—to make the concrete evidence at hand public and to show the world who is a spy, who is a human rights defender and who is a terrorist.
