Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu on Friday criticized the European Union’s foreign policy chief for her comments on the rule of law in Turkey, a day after she and another official rebuked Ankara over the arrest of journalists and the detention of a Kurdish politician, Reuters reported.
In an interview with broadcaster CNN Türk, Çavuşoğlu criticized the comments from Federica Mogherini as “out of line” after she took Turkey to task at a news conference on Thursday over the detention of journalists and academics and said she hoped that politician Selahattin Demirtaş would soon be released.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled this week that Turkey should swiftly process Demirtaş’s case, saying his pre-trial detention had gone on longer than could be justified.
Demirtaş has been in pre-trial detention for more than two years on terrorism charges.
Çavuşoğlu described the ECtHR ruling as motivated by politics, not the law, and said the case would be determined by Turkey’s courts, adding that the government would appeal the judgment.