Turkish asylum requests in Germany more than double in 2016

PanARMENIAN.Net - More than 4,400 Turkish citizens have applied for asylum in Germany this year, the government said on Friday, November 18, with numbers soaring since a failed coup attempt against Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, AFP reports.

Among them are several Turkish military officers stationed at Germany's Ramstein NATO air base, national news agency DPA has reported.

Berlin-Ankara relations have been badly strained by concerns over the Erdogan government's stance on civil rights, especially its sweeping crackdown against opposition lawmakers, journalists and other critical voices in the wake of the July coup attempt.

On Friday, Germany's Office for Migration and Refugees said that this year it had received 4,437 political asylum requests to the end of October from Turks, compared to 1,767 during all of last year.

Numbers had steadily climbed from 275 in July to 485 in October, it said, cautioning however that the rise could not be tied directly to the coup attempt, given the long time lags for asylum applications.

German conservative lawmaker Stephan Mayer, who sits on parliament's interior affairs committee, said: "We must presume that the number of Turks who will request political asylum in Germany will rise further."

Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier had said last week Berlin wants to "help persecuted scientists, cultural workers, journalists, who can no longer work in Turkey, come to Germany to work".

Erdogan, for his part, has accused Germany of harbouring thousands of Kurdish militants and failing to respond to its requests to extradite terror suspects of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party or PKK.

"We gave them 4,500 files. Six of them were looked at," Erdogan said before leaving on a foreign trip on Friday. "Germany is not keeping an eye on this well.

"Terror will return like a boomerang tomorrow and hit Germany. Germany is playing this wrong. The West has become a sanctuary for terror. You say the PKK is a terror group and then support them. What kind of friendship and honesty is this?"