Monday, October 25, 2021
“Be more careful in the future”
Erdogan doesn’t want to expel diplomats
At the weekend, Turkish President Erdogan threatened to expel the ambassadors of ten Western countries, including Germany. The threat is not officially carried out. Now Erdogan is moving away from it completely – after a tweet of several messages.
The Turkish head of state Recep Tayyip Erdogan has refrained from threatening to expel Western diplomats. The ambassadors had “withdrawn” and “will be more cautious in the future,” said Erdogan.
Previously, some of the embassies concerned had published a declaration stating that, in accordance with the Vienna Convention, they would not interfere in the internal affairs of the host country. The German embassy in Turkey shared a corresponding tweet from the US embassy.
The embassies stated in the tweet that they would continue to adhere to Article 41 of the Vienna Convention. The article instructs diplomats, among other things, not to interfere in the internal affairs of the receiving state. The state news agency Anadolu celebrated this as a success and tweeted for its part: “The US embassy in Ankara has given way.”
In addition to Germany and the USA, France, Canada, Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Sweden were also affected by the dispute.
The background to the diplomatic scandal is a statement made by the ten ambassadors at the beginning of last week. In it they demand the release of the Turkish entrepreneur and culture promoter Osman Kavala. The 64-year-old has been in custody in Istanbul since 2017, although the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ordered his release in 2019. Kavala is accused of supporting the Gezi protests in Istanbul in 2013, which were critical of the government, and of instigating an attempted coup. He is also accused of “political and military espionage” in connection with the attempted coup in 2016. Critics see the allegations as politically motivated.