Germany supports terrorism: Turkey’s Erdogan

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused Germany of supporting terrorism after German authorities canceled planned rallies in support of a referendum in Turkey aimed at expanding Erdogan’s executive powers.

The German authorities “need to be put on trial for aiding and harboring terror,” Erdogan said in Istanbul on Friday.
The Turkish president’s comments come after a group of German legislators called on Chancellor Angela Merkel to ban him from entering the country while Deniz Yücel, a Turkish-German journalist for German daily Die Welt, continues to be held in Turkish police custody since February 14.

The call was followed by the cancellation of a number of pro-Erdogan rallies in Germany, which in turn prompted Turkey to summon the German ambassador in protest.

Yücel, who is “a representative of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) [and] a German agent, was hidden for a month in the German consulate. When we told them to hand him over to be tried, they refused,” Erdogan said.

The journalist is accused of alleged links to the hacker collective RedHack, which obtained the emails of Turkey’s Energy Minister Berat Albayrak, Erdogan’s son-in-law, and made them available on the online leaking platform WikiLeaks.