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Austria informed Turkey of its concerns and disgust regarding the activities of the Turkish secret service on Tuesday.
3:45 p.m., September 2, 2020
A representative of the embassy was asked to speak with the Foreign Ministry in the afternoon for this purpose, reported a spokeswoman for the department at the request of the APA. The Turkish Foreign Ministry has denied the spying attempts for the time being. From now on you can see the justice system in the Chancellery. The starting point of the new surprise was that, according to information from the Minister of the Interior, Karl Nehammer (ÖVP), a person who is said to have been an informant in the Ankara service against the Turks living in Austria was discovered. The alleged spy is said to have confessed and the charges against him are pending.
Turkey’s Foreign Ministry denied the espionage allegations. Ankara rejects the “baseless allegations,” spokesman Hami Aksoy said, according to the Reuters news agency on Tuesday. Vienna is unable to “escape the populist rhetoric and its obsession against Turkey,” said Hami Aksoy. He added: “We urge the Austrian government to stop chasing the artificial agenda with flat and internal political calculations on Turkey and to act with state seriousness, common sense and sincere cooperation.”
“Completely wrong interpretation of the circumstances”
Interior Minister Nehammer reacted angrily to the Turkish criticism. He sees a “completely wrong interpretation of the circumstances.” The government protects and guarantees the exercise of basic rights and freedoms for all people living in Austria, regardless of their origin or religion. Those who identify with our basic democratic values are part of society and enjoy the protection of the Austrian authorities, the Interior Minister said.
According to extremism expert Thomas Rammerstorfer, the case that has now been discovered is by no means an isolated case. In his opinion, the Austrian security authorities would investigate “against several dozen” people for espionage for Turkey. In an interview with the APA, Rammerstorfer praised the work of protecting the constitution, but at the same time criticized the “political marketing” of the cause before the Vienna elections, which he considered “very doubtful”.
“We have exactly the same problems in Vorarlberg, Tyrol and Upper Austria as in Vienna,” criticized the publicist and green politician from Upper Austria “the attempts to delegate this whole issue to Vienna.” In fact, neither the SPÖ, the ÖVP nor the FPÖ, but “not even the Greens, my party” had become famous in this matter. “Everyone should remove their nose,” Rammerstorfer said.
Meanwhile, a left-wing Kurdish-Turkish association in Vienna-Favoriten reported an arson attack at its headquarters. In Tuesday’s incident, the fire in the entrance area of the Ernst-Kirchweger-Haus had already spread to the wooden stairs, the association VTID (Turkish Workers Association in Vienna) announced in a broadcast on Wednesday. The fire was extinguished in time.
The attack occurred a few hours after the press conference of the Interior Minister Karl Nehammer (ÖVP) on the activities of the Turkish secret service in Austria. So “it’s not difficult to guess who carried out this arson,” said club president Nadir Aykut.
