VIENNA: Turkey cannot revive its strained relationship with the European Union until it frees German citizens it has detained, Germany’s foreign minister said on Friday as his Turkish counterpart called for a fresh start with the bloc.
Turkey, which has had awkward relations with Europe for several years, is seeking to mend them at a time when its currency has been falling and its ties with the United States have sharply deteriorated.
Germany says 50 of its citizens are being held in Turkish prisons following a crackdown after a failed coup in July 2016. Only seven have been charged. Another 35 are blocked from leaving the country.
“These cases must be resolved,” Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, who will make his first official trip to Ankara next week, told reporters during a meeting between EU foreign ministers and countries aspiring to join the European Union, including Turkey.
“That would be a step toward normalizing relations with Germany, but also with the European Union,” he said, adding that he would press the issue during his two-day trip to Ankara and Istanbul from Wednesday.
Ties between Germany and Turkey, both members of the US-led NATO alliance, have been extremely tense since Berlin condemned Ankara’s arrests of some 50,000 people and the suspension or firing of 150,000 in the post-coup crackdown.
There has however been a slight thaw in recent months after Turkey released one German-Turkish journalist and allowed another German citizen to leave the country.
Talks with Turkey on EU membership were effectively suspended last year, although Ankara remains a candidate.
Ankara says the scale of its crackdown is justified by the gravity of events on July 15, 2016, when rogue soldiers commandeered tanks, planes and helicopters, bombing parliament and government buildings in their attempt to seize power.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in Vienna that the EU failed to understand Turkey’s security challenge.
“We don’t have any problem with the EU or with Europe, we are part of this continent,” Cavusoglu told reporters. “Yes we have some issues with the European Union, particularly after the attempted coup. The measures we had to take were not understood by Europe ... but now we want to normalize our relations.”
As well as reviving stalled EU membership talks, Ankara wants more EU money to house Syrian refugees, a deeper customs union with the bloc and progress in talks on letting Turks visit the EU without visas.
The EU is wary of what it sees as rapid backsliding on democracy and human rights in Turkey, and was angered by rehetoric from President Tayyip Erdogan last year, including comparing the Dutch and German governments to Nazis.
Asked in Vienna if Turkey needed economic aid from the European Union to stop the fall in the value of the Turkish lira, Maas said: “The first thing for Turkey is to complete the conditions for normalization ... the ball is in Turkey’s court.”
Turkey must free prisoners to mend ties with EU, Germany says
Turkey must free prisoners to mend ties with EU, Germany says
Italian police fire tear gas as protesters clash near Winter Olympics hockey venue
- Police vans behind a temporary metal fence secured the road to the athletes’ village, but the protest veered away, continuing on a trajectory toward the Santagiulia venue
MILAN: Italian police fired tear gas and a water cannon at dozens of protesters who threw firecrackers and tried to access a highway near a Winter Olympics venue on Saturday.
The brief confrontation came at the end of a peaceful march by thousands against the environmental impact of the Games and the presence of US agents in Italy.
Police held off the violent demonstrators, who appeared to be trying to reach the Santagiulia Olympic ice hockey rink, after the skirmish. By then, the larger peaceful protest, including families with small children and students, had dispersed.
Earlier, a group of masked protesters had set off smoke bombs and firecrackers on a bridge overlooking a construction site about 800 meters (a half-mile) from the Olympic Village that’s housing around 1,500 athletes.
Police vans behind a temporary metal fence secured the road to the athletes’ village, but the protest veered away, continuing on a trajectory toward the Santagiulia venue. A heavy police presence guarded the entire route.
There was no indication that the protest and resulting road closure interfered with athletes’ transfers to their events, all on the outskirts of Milan.
The demonstration coincided with US Vice President JD Vance’s visit to Milan as head of the American delegation that attended the opening ceremony on Friday.
He and his family visited Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” closer to the city center, far from the protest, which also was against the deployment of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to provide security to the US delegation.
US Homeland Security Investigations, an ICE unit that focuses on cross-border crimes, frequently sends its officers to overseas events like the Olympics to assist with security. The ICE arm at the forefront of the immigration crackdown in the US is known as Enforcement and Removal Operations, and there is no indication its officers are being sent to Italy.
At the larger, peaceful demonstration, which police said numbered 10,000, people carried cardboard cutouts to represent trees felled to build the new bobsled run in Cortina. A group of dancers performed to beating drums. Music blasted from a truck leading the march, one a profanity-laced anti-ICE anthem.
“Let’s take back the cities and free the mountains,” read a banner by a group calling itself the Unsustainable Olympic Committee. Another group called the Association of Proletariat Excursionists organized the cutout trees.
“They bypassed the laws that usually are needed for major infrastructure project, citing urgency for the Games,” said protester Guido Maffioli, who expressed concern that the private entity organizing the Games would eventually pass on debt to Italian taxpayers.
Homemade signs read “Get out of the Games: Genocide States, Fascist Police and Polluting Sponsors,” the final one a reference to fossil fuel companies that are sponsors of the Games. One woman carried an artificial tree on her back decorated with the sign: “Infernal Olympics.”
The demonstration followed another last week when hundreds protested the deployment of ICE agents.
Like last week, demonstrators Saturday said they were opposed to ICE agents’ presence, despite official statements that a small number of agents from an investigative arm would be present in US diplomatic territory, and not operational on the streets.
