Germany Summons Turkish Ambassador over Activists' Arrests

The Foreign Ministry on Wednesday said it had summoned Turkey's ambassador in Berlin to protest the pre-trial detention of six human rights activists, particularly that of German citizen Peter Steudtner.

"The Turkish government needs to immediately and directly hear the German government's outrage and incomprehension as well as its crystal-clear expectations in the case of Peter Steudtner and, this time, without diplomatic niceties," Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Schäfer said, Deutsche Welle reported.

Schäfer said German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel had interrupted his summer vacation to attend government consultations over the Turkish court's decision to jail Steudtner, a human rights trainer who was taken into custody earlier this month.

Steudtner was one of 10 people - including Amnesty's Turkey director Idil Eser - who were detained in a July 5 police raid on a hotel on the island of Buyukada, off Istanbul. Four detainees were released on Tuesday morning, while the other six were jailed ahead of a trial under suspicion of aiding an armed terror group.

The spokesman said the point had been clearly made to the ambassador that Germany considered the activists' arrests to have been both unacceptable and incomprehensible, and that Berlin wanted Steudtner released immediately. "He now knows that we are serious about it," said Schäfer.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday condemned a decision earlier in the day to detain Steudtner ahead of his trial, saying it was "absolutely unjustified."

"We declare our solidarity with him and all the others arrested ... The German government will do all it can, on all levels, to secure his release," she said.

The foreign ministry had issued a separate statement calling for the rapid release of the six activists. "Linking a fighter and spokesman for human rights and democracy like Peter Steudtner to supporters of terrorists is absurd," the statement said.