Britain’s May in Turkey for talks with Erdogan

In a bitter statement, the ministry said the eight individuals played “an active role” in the coup which tried to overthrow President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and accused the Greek judiciary of encouraging “impunity”.

May’s remarks on human rights comes despite her total expression of support for Persian Gulf dictatorships such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain as Britain presses ahead with more weapon sales to both regimes, which are notorious for their grave human rights records in their cruel repression of domestic dissent.

British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson also visited Turkey just three months after Britain voted in June to leave the European Union, saying during his stay that London wanted a “jumbo free trade deal” with Ankara.

“This will help our two governments and security services to work even more closely together in important areas such as intelligence sharing, aviation security and domestic security.This partnership will help Turkey as it grapples with the threat posed by heightened terrorist attacks in this country”, she said.

Mr Yildirim was more direct in his condemnation of Mr Trump’s attitude to immigration.

The soldiers – three majors, three captains and two sergeant majors – fled to Greece by helicopter in the aftermath of the failed coup attempt in July of 2016 and asked for political asylum, as they feared for their lives.

“We demanded that the eight soldiers be tried again”.

The UK foreign minister Boris Johnson said on a visit to Ankara a year ago that he was hoping for a “jumbo” free trade deal with Turkey after Brexit.

The conversation turned testy when Donald Trump’s executive orders banning refugees from entering the United States and suspending travel visas of citizens from “countries of particular concern” were brought up.

May laughed when Erdogan said her trip to Washington “was well-covered in Turkey“.

The working group will be the 13th Britain has established to scope out potential agreements.

May said the two countries had agreed to form a joint working group for post-Brexit trade.

Before being taken the presidential palace, Mrs May laid a wreath at the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk – the leader of the Turkish War of Independence and founder of the Republic of Turkey.

The PM is under pressure to confront Mr Erdogan over human rights, following his crackdown on dissent in the wake of the coup, which has seen a wave of arrests, the closure of numerous media outlets and the removal of thousands of public officials – including judges, academics and teachers – from their jobs.

Turkey has criticized what it calls insufficient support from the US -led anti-IS coalition in its military drive to liberate a key town in northern Syria from the extremists.