NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Friday that Turkish soldiers in the military alliance have sought asylum in other countries amid a government crackdown following an attempted coup.
Some Turkish officers working for the alliance have requested asylum in the countries where they are working, Stoltenberg said at NATO headquarters in Brussels.
However, he called it a “national decision, a national issue.”
Several Turkish soldiers from a NATO airbase in Ramstein, Germany, applied for asylum at the beginning of November, Kaiserslautern district authority chief Paul Junker said this week.
The move came four months after the failed July 15 coup in Turkey, but German authorities did not clarify the grounds for the asylum applications.
Turkey’s government declared a state of emergency following the failed military coup, and launched a crackdown on alleged supporters of US-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen, whom President Recep Tayyip Erdogan holds responsible.
“Turkey has the right to prosecute those behind the failed coup, but of course it is important that this is done in accordance with the rule of law,” Stoltenberg said.
“NATO is based on some core values – democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty – and I expect all allies to live up to those values,” he said.
Stoltenberg will travel to Istanbul on Sunday, ahead of a NATO parliamentary assembly the following day.
In a new development, Stoltenberg spoke with Donald Trump by phone, thanking the U.S. president-elect for raising the issue of defence spending during his election campaign.
Stoltenberg agreed that “fairer burden-sharing” across the military alliance would be a top priority moving forward, according to a summary of the call posted on NATO’s website.
Trump “underlined NATO’s enduring importance,” the summary read, adding that he and Stoltenberg discussed how NATO is adapting to a new security environment with threats of terrorism.
During his election campaign, the Republican triggered concern among NATO allies with the suggestion that some alliance members were not spending enough on defence.
Trump has said that the U.S. might not come to the defence of some alliance members during an attack.
The Baltic countries of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia all once occupied by the Soviet Union have been fearful of a potential Russian invasion after Moscow annexed Ukraine’s southern Crimea region more than two years ago