Berlin Says Received No Notification From Turkey On Ambassador Non Grata Status

BERLIN (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 25th October, 2021) Germany has not received any notification through diplomatic channels that its ambassador to Turkey was declared persona non grata, German Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Andrea Sasse said on Monday.

Last week, the embassies of 10 countries - Canada, France, Finland, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden and the United States - called on Turkey to release Turkish human rights activist Osman Kavala. In response, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that he had instructed the foreign ministry to declare the ambassadors of these 10 countries persona undesirable.

"Of course, we have taken note of the media reports about President Erdogan's statements, we have not yet received relevant notifications about the recall or similar through diplomatic channels," Sasse said at a briefing in Berlin.

Osman Kavala is a well-known Turkish human rights activist, founder of the Anadolu Kultur AS Cultural Foundation, which, in particular, supports projects of ethnic and religious minorities, often with an international focus, including reconciliation between the Turkish and Armenian populations and a peaceful solution to the Kurdish issue.

In February 2020, a Turkish court acquitted Kavala of involvement in an attempt to overthrow the government in the case of protests in Istanbul's Gezi Park in 2013, but on the same day, the Istanbul prosecutor's office issued a new arrest warrant for him. Kavala was charged with participating in the attempted coup in Turkey in July 2016.