Turkey Sought Around 800 Arrests in Germany via Interpol After Coup Attempt

The Turkish government has made a total of 848 requests of search or arrest through Interpol from Germany, since 2016’s failed coup attempt, the DW Turkish reported on Wednesday.

The revelation came as part of the German Ministry of Justice’s response to a parliamentary question posed by the Left Party. The question was relating to Turkey’s appeals made to the German police after the coup attempt against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

According to DW, the German Ministry of Justice said that out of 848 requests made by Turkey via Interpol, 791 were for arrest warrants, while 57 involved finding home addresses of certain individuals.

However, the ministry did not clarify how much of Turkey’s requests were fulfilled. “The federal government does not share statistics in this regard,” the ministry said in its reply.

The German ministry also did not respond to the question about how many of the instances involved people that are subjected to oppression because of their political views and the ministry determining that Interpol’s power was being abused.

Left Party lawmaker Andrej Hunko, referring to the German government’s previous statements, said that Interpol concluded 130 search warrant requests made to it since 2014 targeted individuals for their political views and its authorization was tried to be abused.

Hunko told the media that he believes a majority of applications denied by Interpol came from Turkey, Ukraine and Spain. “It is known that these countries use Interpol in order to oppress the dissident,” Hunko said.

According to the German government, a total of 35 German citizens have been arrested in Turkey for political reasons since the 2016 coup attempt.

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