Bulgaria arrests German Kurds sought by Turkey

The man could face extradition to Turkey.

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Bulgarian police arrested a German Kurd at the behest of Turkey, Germany’s state media reported on Wednesday.

The Kurd identified as Mehmet Y. and a citizen of Turkey was detained in the Bulgarian city of Varna on Tuesday evening on the grounds of being a member of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an outlawed group leading a decades-long insurgency for Kurdish self-rule.

The German Foreign Ministry confirmed the man’s arrest and said the embassy in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia was providing him with consular service, Berlin’s international broadcaster Deutsche Welle wrote.

Turkish state’s Anadolu Agency also reported the arrest, adding Ankara sought him with a red notice at the Interpol.

A Varna court has released him on probation with the condition of staying for 40 days at the hotel he had booked, the agency wrote.

A court in the Turkish city of Adana had convicted him of PKK propaganda, sentencing him in absentia to six years and three months of imprisonment back in 2005 for alleged activities among the students at a local university.

Bulgaria, a European Union country, could extradite the 44-year-old to Turkey, as it had previously done in the cases related to several Turkish figures opposed to the regime of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Mehmet Y. fled Turkey for Germany and received asylum in 2001 before becoming a naturalized citizen in 2009.

According to figures by Germany, about 35 Germans, most of them with dual citizenship, have been detained in Turkey in an ongoing crackdown that began in the wake of a failed coup attempt to overthrow Erdogan two years ago.

Turkey’s ties with Europe and the US have deteriorated due to those countries’ refusal to extradite Turkish and Kurdish dissidents wanted by Ankara as reports of unfair trials and widespread torture in Turkey spiked in recent years.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany