Turkey and Germany to strengthen frayed ties

The foreign ministers of Turkey and Germany yesterday pledged to repair strained ties between the countries in what is being regarded in Berlin as a charm offensive by Ankara to boost its economy.

Mevlut Cavusoglu visited Sigmar Gabriel for talks in the latter’s home town of Goslar in central Germany, where they later said it was time for a restart after disputes including a row over Ankara’s crackdown after the 2016 coup attempt.

The foreign ministers were at pains to sound conciliatory during the meeting, which included a tour of an 11th-century imperial palace and a walk through the picturesque town.

“We’ve both made it our business to do everything we can to overcome the difficulties there have been in German-Turkish relations, and to find more common ground by remembering everything that binds us together,” Mr Gabriel said at a briefing with Mr Cavusoglu.

Mr Cavusoglu wrote in a guest editorial published in several German newspapers that the two countries “must break the current spiral of crisis in our relationship”.

On Friday, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Paris for the first time since the coup bid in another fence-mending exercise.

But that was marred by a spat with a French journalist who asked him about alleged Turkish arms shipments to Islamist rebels in Syria.

Relations between Turkey and Europe, and Germany in particular, hit a low point last year with the arrests of German citizens and fierce rhetoric from Mr Erdogan.

In March, he caused outrage in Germany by accusing chancellor Angela Merkel of employing “Nazi methods” after local German authorities refused to allow some Turkish politicians to address election rallies among Turkish immigrants.

Mr Cavusoglu said Germany had failed to grasp the impact that the coup bid had on Turkey.

“We think that the trauma that the coup attempt of July 15, 2016 caused in our population wasn’t fully understood there,” he wrote in the editorial.

“We expect our German friends to better understand the situation that Turkey is confronted with.”

Turkey has accused Germany and other western countries of failing to condemn the coup quickly or forcefully enough, and of sheltering people involved in it, as well as harbouring Kurdish and far-leftist militants.

Tensions had been rising before the failed coup. There had been criticism in Germany over what is perceived as Mr Erdogan’s increasingly undemocratic rule, and Turkey was enraged by a German parliamentary resolution declaring the 1915 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces a genocide.