Turkey summoned the German ambassador in Ankara on Wednesday to express condemnation over the detention in Germany of two journalists from a pro-government Turkish newspaper, the Foreign Ministry said, in the latest case of tensions between the two NATO allies.
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 German ambassador in Turkey was called to the Turkish Foreign Ministry today for an interview," a source at Germany's foreign minister told Reuters.
Germany is home to the world's largest Turkish diaspora community, but relations between Berlin and Ankara have suffered in recent years over many issues including Germany's handling of the followers of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, blamed by Ankara for a 2016 failed coup and labelled a terrorist organisation in Turkey.
Germany's refusal to extradite military officers whom Turkey accuses of participating in the coup attempt, after they claimed asylum, has enraged Ankara.
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 Gulen network after a complaint by one of its members.
Germany interior ministry was not immediately available to comment on the case.
(Reporting by Huseyin Hayatsever in Ankara and Riham Alkousaa in Berlin; Editing by Daren Butler, Friederike Heine and Christina Fincher)
