Turkish leader reaches out to Germany’s Merkel
A year after accusing Germans of using Nazi methods, Turkey’s leader is looking for friends in Berlin.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan man capital arrives on in Thursday the Gerfresh Donald from Trump a handshake at the United with Nations tensions that unresolved. left U.S.-Turkey
sure Hemmed and an economic in by U.S. crash, pres- Erdogan is turning to the European Union, starting with the leader he views as its power center: German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country is Turkey’s biggest economic partner. He and Merkel meet today, followed by a joint news conference and a state dinner in Erdogan’s honor by Germany’s president.
It’s a turnaround from
Turkish-EU hostility that dominated the past year and a contrast to Erdogan’s brief encounter in New York with Trump, a NATO ally whom he has accused of waging “economic warfare” against Turkey. Erdogan’s state visit is also the latest sign of the global realignment under way as the U.S. president’s unorthodox diplomacy spurs countries to set aside clashes and band together.
“Turkey wants to see Germany on its side as it tries to rebuild its relationship with the U.S. and puts its economy back on track,” Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, head of the German Marshall Fund of the United States office in Ankara, said in an interview.
Erdogan has an auto- matic opening in a country with some 2.8 million residents of Turkish descent, who make up Germany’s biggest minority. He’ll meet with some of them after arriv- ing urday on he’ll Thursday. have breakfast On Satwith mosque Merkel, opening then in Cologne. attend a Given the grievances and demands on both sides, even small steps may count as progress when Merkel hosts Erdogan at the chancellery. While Germany has ruled out direct aid, Merkel has voiced concern about maintaining Turkey’s economic stability and her government has signaled it may do more to promote German private investment. Erdogan’s lifting of the state of emergency doesn’t go far enough in restoring demo- cratic institutions, said a Foreign Ministry official in Berlin, asking not to be identified under government protocol. In an op-ed Thursday in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Germany’s newspaper of record, Erdogan called for a fresh start as equal partners. “Let us concentrate on mutual interests, com- mon challenges and com- mon threats,” he said. It’ll be a hard sell in Germany, where the political class has expressed outrage at Erdogan’s concentration of power and erosion of democratic institutions since he put down a coup attempt in 2016. state Merkel dinner won’t hosted attend by Fed- the eral Steinmeier President at his Frank-Walter 18th-century Bellevue palace, which several German opposition leaders say they’ll boycott. Chan- cellery officials say Merkel will have enough time to talk with Erdogan during her two meetings. “The regretful develop- ment of Turkey under President Erdogan away from Europe has in no way been changed or corrected,” Norbert Roettgen, a member of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union who heads parliament’s foreign affairs committee, told reporters. “It would be wrong to overrate this visit as a new start in relations, because a new start has to have a basis.” A year after Erdogan compounded tensions with Nazi references against several European countries including Germany, he’s shifting ground in the throes of an economic crisis that’s sent the Turkish lira down by almost 40 percent this year and the government seeking ways to stabilize banks. Shared regional interests and the presence of almost 7,000 German businesses in Turkey have helped avoid a breakdown in relations.