The Foreign Ministry yesterday summoned Turkey’s chargé d’affaires in Denmark following allegations that a number of Danes with Turkish roots fear being blacklisted by the Turkish authorities for speaking out against the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
During the meeting, the Turkish chargé d’affaires was made aware that the Danish government was very concerned about the allegations and that, if proven, the registration and reporting of citizens in Denmark to foreign nations, including Turkey, would be punishable.
Furthermore, the Foreign Ministry made it clear that any kind of encouragement by the Turkish authorities to get citizens in Denmark to report on other citizens would be considered unacceptable.
Berlingske newspaper reported earlier this week that at least 10 Danes –including MP Lars Aslan Rasmussen and Özlem Cekic, a former MP – have received threatening phone calls and messages on Facebook.
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Coup consequences
It’s not the first time a Turkish diplomat has been summoned to the Foreign Ministry since Turkey’s Erdoğan-led government cracked down hard on dissidents following the failed coup in Turkey last summer.
In November, the outgoing Turkish ambassador to Denmark, Mehmet Donmez, was summoned to the Foreign Ministry in the wake of the arrests of 12 MPs from the Turkish-Kurdish opposition party Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).
According to the Turkish chargé d’affaires, the Turkish government did not have a reporting or registration system for people who are opposed to or critical of the government.
Moreover, the chargé d’affaires maintained that a phoneline citizens can use to give information to the government is intended for terrorism-related instances, and that no ‘blacklist’ with people from Denmark exists.
