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ISTANBUL President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday Turkey would not watch passively as weapons are sent to Kurdish fighters on its southern border, saying his country would respond to any threats to national security.

The United States has been arming Kurdish YPG fighters taking part in the battle to recapture the Syrian city of Raqqa from Islamic State, angering its NATO ally Turkey. Ankara views the YPG as an extension of the Kurdish PKK group that has waged a long insurgency in southeast Turkey.

Turkey, Washington and the European Union have all designated the PKK as a terrorist organization.

"We will definitely not remain silent and unresponsive to the support and arming of terror organizations next to our borders and the forming of terror islands in the region," Hurriyet Daily News website quoted Erdogan as saying.

"We will not hesitate to use our right to self defense against formations threatening the security of our country," Erdogan told a news conference at the G20 summit in Hamburg, according to the web site.

Erdogan expressed Turkey's alarm at the U.S. decision to arm the YPG at a White House meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in May. The two men also met at the G20 summit.

Syrian rebels said on Friday they were preparing to join the Turkish military in a major new offensive against Kurdish forces in northwestern Syria, raising the prospect of yet another front in an increasingly complex conflict.

Turkish officials have not commented on any military preparations in northern Syria. Turkish troops launched an incursion across the border last August in support of Syrian rebel fighters, targeting both Islamic State and the YPG.

(Reporting by Dominic Evans; Editing by Helen Popper)

HAMBURG President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday he thought his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump had been satisfied with his assertions that Russia had not meddled in the U.S. presidential election.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto on Saturday said that the U.S.-Mexico relationship cannot be defined by "murmurs," the day after U.S. President Donald Trump said Mexico would "absolutely" pay for his proposed southern border wall.

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Erdogan says Turkey will respond to any threats on its border - Reuters

Hamburg - German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Saturday that "deep differences" remained between her and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, after they met on the sidelines of the G20 summit.

She stressed however that Erdogan had engaged in the talks and that the gathering "honoured" Turkey's role in managing the migrant crisis driven by Syria's civil war and other conflicts.

Turkey's sweeping arrests of alleged state enemies after last year's coup attempt and a dispute about a Nato base "are developments which I of course raised that show deep differences," Merkel said.

"And we didn't sweep those under the table".

Berlin-Ankara relations have been fraught, deteriorating sharply over Turkey's mass crackdown after the failed putsch against Erdogan last year and a host of other civil rights controversies.

Another dispute is about Deniz Yucel, a German-Turkish journalist with the newspaper Die Welt who was imprisoned by Turkey on terror charges earlier this year.

And last month Germany decided to withdraw its troops who support the fight against the Islamic State group in Syria from Nato partner Turkey's Incirlik base and move them to Jordan after German lawmakers were prohibited from visiting the base.

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Merkel says 'deep differences' remain with Erdogan - News24

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan today accused recently detained rights activists of trying to implement the aims of those who failed to oust him in a coup last year.

Idil Eser, director of Amnesty International Turkey, was held on Wednesday along with activists and trainers on Buyukada, an island south of Istanbul.

Erdogan, when asked about the activists at a news conference at the closing session of G20 in Hamburg, referred back to the attempt to topple him.

"They gathered for a meeting which was a continuation of July 15," he said, referring to the date when his rule was threatened, noting that any action regarding the activists rests with the judiciary.

Turkish police detained 10 people: eight human rights defenders and two foreign trainers -- a German and a Swedish national. They were subsequently taken to various police stations.

Amnesty said those arrested were attending a "digital security and information management workshop".

The detentions come less than a month after Amnesty's Turkey chair, Taner Kilic, was remanded in custody on what the group described as "baseless charges" of links to Fethullah Gulen, a US-based cleric and alleged mastermind of the coup.

Turkey remains under a state of emergency, which critics say has been used to round up not just the alleged plotters but anyone who dares to oppose the president.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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Erdogan compares detained activists to coup plotters - Business Standard

By Merve Tahiroglu and Eric S. Edelman By Merve Tahiroglu and Eric S. Edelman July 7 at 11:51 AM

Eric S. Edelman is a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey and a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Merve Tahiroglu is a research associate at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Rumors are swirling in Washington about a potential prisoner swap with Turkey. The Turks want the United States to release a Turkish-Iranian millionaire awaiting trial in Manhattan, in return for which they might free a North Carolina pastor being held in a prison in Izmir. Both men are accused of threatening national security. Yet a trade would be a grave mistake, one that would help Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to export his contempt for the rule of law to the United States.

Reza Zarrab, the Turkish-Iranian businessman, was arrested upon his arrival in Miami in March 2016 for conspiring to evade international sanctions against Iran. Zarrab, who owns businesses in Turkey, Dubai and China, is believed to have laundered money and gold from Iran at the height of the U.S.-led sanctions regime in 2012-2013. In December 2013, Zarrab was arrested in Turkey as part of a historic corruption scandal that implicated several ministers and businessmen with close ties to Erdogans government. Under legally dubious circumstances, Zarrab was eventually released. But the federal indictment filed by then-federal prosecutor Preet Bharara, in many ways echoing the findings of the 2013 Turkish prosecutors investigation, put Ankaras role in Tehrans underground economy back in the spotlight.

Pastor Andrew Brunsons case is of a totally different nature. He is accused of membership in an armed terrorist organization the so-called Fethullah Gulen Terrorist Organization that Ankara blames for Turkeys failed coup last July. (Fethullah Gulen, a former Erdogan ally turned mortal foe, is a Muslim cleric who has lived for many years in the United States.) Before his arrest, Brunson lived with his family in Turkey for 23 years without incident. He is now among the more than 50,000 people in Turkey arrested on similar charges in the past 11 months. Brunsons lawyer has decried the utter lack of evidence in the pastors case.

President Trump appears to be keen to achieve Brunsons release. He reportedly brought up the issue three times in his first meeting with Erdogan in May, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson met with Brunsons wife while visiting Turkey in March. Turkish officials, however, prefer to highlight Zarrabs case with their American counterparts.

And the stakes have only gotten higher. In March, U.S. authorities arrested another Turk connected to the case, the banker Mehmet Hakan Atilla. Zarrab and Atilla could reveal at trial new information implicating Erdogan or his family in the sanctions-avoiding scheme.

Trump may find a diplomatic deal with Ankara for Brunson appealing. After all, one of his few diplomatic accomplishments since taking office was securing the release, during the visit of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, of charity worker Aya Hjiazi, an American citizen who had been jailed in Cairo for three years. But trading a peaceful faith leader imprisoned on spurious charges in exchange for a sleazy middleman accused of corrupting a foreign government on behalf of Iran would only help Erdogan suborn the rule of law in the United States as he has done in Turkey.

Since he first came to power in 2002, Erdogan has systematically undermined his countrys fragile legal institutions by staging show trials featuring his enemies. Zarrab owes his freedom in Turkey to a blatant political intervention in the judicial system. Within weeks of the 2013 anti-corruption operation, the government replaced all law enforcement officials involved in the investigation. Within months, all the cases were dismissed and all the suspects freed.

Since the coup attempt, Erdogan has effectively ruled by decree. Government critics risk arbitrary detention on dubious terrorism charges. More than a dozen opposition parliamentarians are in jail. As Ankara prepares to transition from a parliamentary to a presidential system, the lines between Turkeys executive, legislative and judicial branches are becoming even more blurred.

The Turkish president also appears intent on extending his authoritarianism to American shores. While Erdogan watched, his bodyguards viciously beat protesters outside the Turkish ambassadors residence in Washington in May. When the State Department expressed concern, the Turkish Foreign Ministry had the effrontery to summon U.S. Ambassador John Bass to protest the actions of the D.C. Metropolitan Police. And this was not the first assault of its kind in Washington. During Erdogans 2016 visit, his bodyguards roughed up protesters in front of the Brookings Institution when Erdogan arrived to speak. These attacks occurred while Erdogans lobbyists in Washington have been working full-time to achieve a diplomatic deal to spring Zarrab as the price for improving U.S.-Turkish bilateral relations.

Trump should intensify the diplomatic effort to secure the release of Brunson but not by negotiating a prisoner swap for Tehrans bag man in Turkey. Erdogans efforts to undermine the U.S. legal system shouldnt be rewarded. For Turks who are trying to protect whats left of their countrys democracy, its the least that Washington can do.

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Why Trump should not swap prisoners with Erdogan - Washington Post

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attends a working session on the first day of the G20 summit. World leaders meeting at the G20 must stand up for Turkeys beleaguered civil society now. Photograph: Patrik Stollarz/AFP/Getty Images

In July 1998, Amnesty International wrote to the Turkish government demanding the release of the then-mayor of Istanbul, who had been jailed after reading a poem at a demonstration. Amnesty International had declared him a prisoner of conscience and launched a global campaign on his behalf. His name was Recep Tayyip Erdoan.

Nineteen years later, and now president, it is the same Recep Tayyip Erdoan who presides over the detention of some of Turkeys most prominent human rights defenders and activists, including Amnesty International Turkeys two leaders.

On Wednesday morning, eight human rights defenders, among them Amnesty Internationals Turkey director Idil Eser, were detained while attending a workshop, along with the two international trainers. For over 28 hours, no one, including their loved ones, knew where they were being held. Their detention has now been authorised for seven days, and could be extended for a further seven days without them being brought before a court.

Their lawyers have told us that the group are facing a criminal investigation on the absurd suspicion of being members of an armed terrorist organisation. With decades of solid human rights work between them, the accusations would be laughable were the situation in Turkey not so extremely grave for anyone who dares to criticise the government.

Idils detention comes less than a month after the chair of Amnesty International Turkey, Taner Kl, was remanded in custody on baseless charges. Accused of supporting the Fethullah Glen movement an organisation he has openly criticised Taner is now in prison, waiting for an indictment and a trial. This could take months. If found guilty of membership of the movement he faces up to 15 years in prison.

These detentions highlight the precarious situation facing human rights activists in Turkey a country that has seen more than 50,000 people jailed in the crackdown that followed the attempted coup almost exactly one year ago.

Indeed, if anyone was still in doubt about the endgame of Turkeys post-coup crackdown, they should not be now. There is to be no civil society, no criticism and no accountability in Erdoans Turkey.

The eight human rights defenders are the latest victims of President Erdoans ruthless and arbitrary crackdown on any and all criticism of the authorities in the country. Since the failed coup attempt, Erdoan has embarked on a full-scale assault on civil society that many observers in Turkey view as unprecedented.

There are currently ongoing criminal investigations against approximately 150,000 people. In the last year, 160 media outlets have been shut down and an estimated 2,500 journalists and other media workers have lost their jobs. With more than 130 journalists and others who work in the media behind bars since the attempted coup, Turkey now jails more journalists than any other country. One-third of all imprisoned journalists in the world are held in Turkish prisons.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of perceived government critics have been jailed and more than 100,000 public sector employees summarily dismissed.

In the wake of the arrest of Idil and the other nine, governments across the world promptly condemned the actions of the Turkish government with a spokeswoman for the US State Department saying that the US was deeply concerned and stressing that more voices, not fewer, are necessary in challenging times.

While these statements are welcome, the international response to Erdoans actions over the past year has been conspicuous by its absence.

The past two days have provided a prime opportunity to redress this failure. The worlds most powerful leaders have gathered in Hamburg for the G20 summit, with the Turkish president in attendance.

In the build-up to the summit, German chancellor Angela Merkel expressed her desire to make the strengthening of civil society a key item on the agenda and extolled the importance of a vibrant civil society in ensuring free societies.

These are fine words. But Idil, Taner and the scores of jailed human rights activists need more than words. If world leaders meeting at the G20 fail to demand their immediate release and stand up for Turkeys beleaguered civil society now, there may be nothing left of it by the time the next summit comes around.

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G20 leaders must demand that President Erdoan release the Istanbul 10 - The Guardian