Turkish-German politician Cem Özdemir, a vocal critic of the Turkish government and its autocratic leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, was reportedly given a police bodyguard after meeting Ankara’s delegation to the Munich Security Conference, Deutsche Welle reported on Sunday.
According to the report, German Green politician Cem Özdemir was put under temporary police protection at the Munich Security Conference after he met with the Turkish delegation in the lobby of his hotel.
The Welt am Sonntag quoted Özdemir, who is very unpopular with the despotic Ankara regime, as saying that he bumped into Turkish delegates by chance in the lobby of the hotel where both he and the delegation, led by Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım, were staying. “I could see by their expressions that they were not pleased to see me,” Özdemir said.
The newspaper reported that the delegation had complained to police after the meeting that there was obviously a “terrorist” staying in the hotel. Özdemir was then given a security detail consisting of three police officers from Saturday morning.
Özdemir, the son of Turkish immigrants to Germany, said the incident confirmed his assessment of the “character of the regime in Ankara” and gave “an indication of the kind of aggression probably practiced by this ‘unsecurity personnel’ in Turkey, if they behave like this in Germany.”
The politician has often vehemently criticised Turkish autocratic President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and said that Turkey could not become a member of the European Union under Erdoğan’s leadership.
During the recent failed coalition negotiations in Germany between the Greens, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives and the Free Democrats (FDP), he was mooted as a potential foreign minister.
The report reminded that last year, US justice officials issued arrest warrants for some of Erdoğan’s bodyguards after they were accused of using force against protesters while Erdoğan was on a visit to Washington in May. The German government later expressed the firm wish that the bodyguards in question should not be present at the G20 summit in Hamburg last July.
