ANKARA (Reuters) -Turkey summoned the German ambassador in Ankara on Wednesday to express condemnation and protest over the detention in Germany of two journalists from a pro-government Turkish newspaper, the Foreign Ministry said.
The public prosecutor’s office in Darmstadt said police had searched the private apartments of two journalists aged 46 and 51 in the western town of Moerfelden-Walldorf on suspicion of dangerous dissemination of personal data.
Investigators confiscated electronic storage media and other devices, the office said, adding that police had detained the two men but later released them.
The Turkish state-owned Anadolu news agency reported that German police had raided the Frankfurt office of the Turkish daily Sabah before detaining the journalists.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry said the journalists had been detained because of their reporting on the network of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, after a complaint by a member of that network.
Ankara says the Gulen network staged a 2016 coup attempt and labels it a terrorist organisation.
The ministry also urged Germany to ensure the immediate release of detained journalists.
Germany’s foreign and interior ministries were not immediately available for comment on the case.
(Reporting by Huseyin Hayatsever in Ankara and Riham Alkousaa in Berlin;Editing by Daren Butler and Friederike Heine)
