Suspects have no links to intelligence service: Turkish FM

Three Turks accused of spying on compatriots in Germany for the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MİT) had no links to either the spy agency or the Directorate of Overseas Turks, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu told reporters Dec. 19.

One of the accused Turks renounced his Turkish citizenship in 2015, Çavuşoğlu said, adding that the Turkish Consulate in Germany was closely following the issue but that nothing had yet been clarified.

The Turkish consulate in Karlsruhe contacted one of the arrested three Turkish men, while another refused to meet with the consul, a Turkish official told the Hürriyet Daily News.

One of the arrested men carries Turkish passport, another dropped his Turkish citizenship in 2005, and the nationality of the third is not certain yet, according to the official.

A lawyer has been assigned for the case, while a prosecutor will reveal the court file about the accusations and charges next week, according to the official.

One suspect, Muhammed Taha G. has a website on which he identified himself as an adviser to the prime ministry.

But officials for Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu told the Daily News that he was not an official at the Prime Ministry nor an adviser to Davutoğlu.

German prosecutors said Dec. 18 that they had arrested three men.

The federal prosecutor's office said two of the suspects - Muhammed Taha G. and Göksel G. - were arrested Dec. 17 at Frankfurt airport. The third, Ahmet Duran Y., was arrested at his home in western Germany.

Muhammed Taha G. is accused of handling the other two as agents, and they collected information for him on Turks in Germany as well as their "organizational structures," prosecutors said in a statement.