Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Germans debate ties with Turkey, Trump
BERLIN — German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her center-left rival, Martin Schulz, locked horns Sunday over how to deal with Turkey, a key issue as they held a televised debate three weeks before the country’s general election.
Schulz, a former president of the European Union’s legislative body, said he would end talks with Ankara about joining the bloc because of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian policies.
“A point has been reached where we need to end the economic relationship, the financial relationship, the customs union and the accession talks,” Schulz said during the 90-minute debate.
Merkel, who has previously expressed doubts about Turkey ever joining the EU, refused to commit to the same move, but she sharply criticized Erdogan’s rule, saying that “Turkey is departing from all democratic practices at breakneck speed.”
“Whether we slam the door shut or Turkey does that is something we’ll have to see,” she said, adding that any move would need to be coordinated with other European countries.
“I don’t plan to break off diplomatic relations with Turkey because we have to outdo each other a little bit during the election campaign to see who is tougher,” Merkel said.
Relations between Germany and Turkey have soured in recent years. Ankara accuses Germany of harboring terrorist opposition groups and Berlin has slammed Turkey for a recent crackdown on dissidents and the arrest of several German citizens.
“The only language Erdogan understands is an unyielding stance,” Schulz said.
The issue marked a rare moment of tension in what was otherwise a measured debate between Merkel and Schulz. Both candidates have run lackluster campaigns so far, prompting yawns from political commentators. Germany’s news weekly Der Spiegel on Saturday depicted Merkel on its front page asleep in a boxing ring, with a tiny Schulz standing timidly behind her and the headline “Wake up!”
Much of the debate was taken up with the issue of migrants, with Merkel saying she stood by her decision to allow hundreds of thousands of migrants into Germany in 2015 and insisting the country can’t isolate itself from the effects of wars and poverty elsewhere in the world.
Schulz largely backed Merkel’s decision, but he criticized her early response to the migrant crisis, saying she failed to enlist other EU countries from the start to share the influx of arrivals.
That prompted a testy response by the chancellor, who’s seeking a fourth term.
“Doesn’t really matter whether he knows better or not,” Merkel said of Schulz, when pressed by one of the moderators. “There are moments in the life of a leader or a chancellor where you just have to take decisions.”
Schulz said he agreed with the policy of granting asylum to those in need and argued that Germany had to meet its international commitments. Instead, he revived his suggestion that Merkel was trying to smother debate in the campaign. “You can’t advance democracy if you’re in the sleeper car,” he said.
In her pitch to voters, Merkel touted her 12 years of experience as the leader of Europe’s biggest economy, citing Germany’s low unemployment rate and pledging not to raise the pension age to 70. Merkel also stressed that she would stick to her longtime policy of choosing international cooperation over confrontation, including with U.S. President Donald Trump.
“We have serious differences with the American president,” Merkel said, citing among other things Trump’s response to last month’s farright march in Charlottesville, Va., but added that the world needs the U.S. if it is to tackle conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, climate change and North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
Schulz carried his campaign trail attacks on Trump into the debate, portraying him as unpredictable, insulting and unsuited to handle the North Korean crisis.
Schulz also hammered auto industry executives over an emissions test cheating scandal and demanded the government take a harder line than it has so far.
Telephone polls after Sunday’s debate put Merkel ahead of Schulz, though in Germany the chancellor is elected by parliament. Schulz’s Social Democratic Party has been trailing Merkel’s center-right Christian Democrat-led bloc in all recent opinion surveys. The two parties have governed together for eight of Merkel’s 12 years in office, and during the debate neither candidate ruled out continuing their current grand coalition at the national level after the election.