Turkey on Saturday condemned Germany for allowing a rally of pro-PKK Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) in Cologne, describing the move as "hypocrisy."
"This two-faced approach, which we condemn strongly, cannot be reconciled with democracy, the fight against terrorism and expectations of a normalization in Turkish-Germany relations," the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a written statement.
Recalling Germany's ban on Turkish politicians, who wanted to carry out rallies ahead of June 24 parliamentary and presidential elections, the ministry said the rule needs to apply on all political parties.
In April, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas had said that his country would not allow Turkish politicians to carry out election campaign rallies.
Meanwhile, EU Minister Ömer Çelik said on his official Twitter account that Germany's permission "is not compatible with a genuine notion of democracy and law. A terrorist show has been staged on the permission of German authorities."
"Permission granted by official authorities to such terrorist activities which in fact should be fought against in the name of democracy and law only means that terror is patronized. This cannot be explained away with any justification whatsoever," Çelik said.
"Democracies which discriminate between terrorist organizations as good or bad ones only weaken their own legitimacy," he added.
According to dpa, HDP politicians Ahmet Yıldırım and Tuğba Hezer were blocked from speaking during the rally. The Turkish parliament previously stripped of the lawmaker statuses of Yıldırım and Hezer over definitive court rulings on terror and defamation charges and non-attendance to parliamentary sessions, respectively.
The government has accused the HDP of having links to the PKK, which is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S. and the EU.
However, despite this close link to a terrorist organization, the party already has many election coordination centers in various provinces of Germany.
According to estimates, there are about 5.5 million Turkish citizens living in western European countries. In Germany alone, there are about 3 million Turkish citizens, making the country a critical stage for election campaigns in Turkey.
Ankara's relations with Berlin have been strained on several occasions due to PKK demonstrations and the presence of the terrorist organization's seniors in the country previously, which Ankara labels as tolerance to terrorism.
The PKK has waged a wide-ranging terror campaign against the Turkish state since the mid-1980s, in which an estimated 40,000 people have been killed.