GERMAN prosecutors said yesterday they had charged a 58-year-old Turkish man with membership of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

The man — identified only as Bedrettin K, with his full surname not given — was charged with “membership of a foreign terrorist organisation.”

Prosecutors claimed the man, using the codename “Ali,” served as a regional PKK leader in Germany from 2012 until his arrest in August 2015, collecting donations and organising political events.

A spokesperson for the British-based Peace in Kurdistan campaign said Mr K was “just one of the hundreds of people who have been criminalised in Germany since the 1980s anti-terror laws.

“It continues today when the Kurds have made every effort to resolve the situation peacefully,” she added.

Meanwhile, Turkey’s leaders hit out at the United States and the United Nations over the war in neighbouring Syria.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned Washington for not declaring the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) a terrorist organisation, as it has the PKK.

“You failed to know [these groups],” he said. “That’s why the region is drenched in blood.”

And Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu criticised the UN’s call for Turkey to open its borders to those fleeing recent Syrian army victories, claiming the world body had done nothing to stop the government or its Russian allies.

But their rage may have been provoked by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) capturing Menagh air base, just south of the broder town of Azaz, from Ahrar as-Sham.

Turkey, Germany’s Nato ally, has waged a brutal crackdown on Kurdish regions since a two-year ceasefire with the PKK broke down in July last year.