Istanbul – Turkey’s foreign ministry on Monday summoned the US charge d’affaires, currently Washington’s most senior diplomat in Ankara, over a media report that the United States had spied on Turkey, Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said.
Subscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
German magazine Der Spiegel said in an article on its website on Sunday that the US National Security Agency (NSA) and Britain’s GCHQ eavesdropping agency had carried out “wide-scale spying against Turkey”, citing documents from the archive of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
“For the reasons that the United States’ name was mentioned, and such claims were made … the charge d’affaires has been called to the foreign ministry and information has been received from him,” Arinc told reporters after the first meeting of Turkey’s new cabinet following a presidential election.
Der Spiegel said the US intelligence services had also worked closely to support Ankara in its efforts to battle Kurdish militants, who waged a three-decade insurgency for greater Kurdish rights in the country’s southeast.
The report comes weeks after the magazine said Germany’s BND foreign intelligence agency had been spying on Turkey for years. That report drew an angry reaction from Ankara, which described it as “absolutely unacceptable” if true.