Turkey trip
Steinmeier met with Erdogan in Ankara
Handshake in Ankara: Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (l) and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. photo
© Bernd von Jutrczenka/dpa
They’ve known each other for a long time – but they probably won’t be close friends anymore. Federal President Steinmeier meets with President Erdogan in Ankara. There are sensitive issues on the agenda.
The Gaza war, on which Germany and Turkey have very different positions, is likely to play a central role. The German side is irritated by Erdogan’s attitude towards the Islamist Hamas, which is responsible for the massacre in Israel on October 7th, but is described by Erdogan as a liberation organization. He accuses Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of a “massacre” in the Gaza Strip and sometimes compares him to Adolf Hitler. Erdogan maintains close contacts with Hamas. At the weekend he met with their head of foreign affairs, Ismail Hanija.
Steinmeier is also likely to address the human rights situation. Important representatives of civil society such as cultural promoter Osman Kavala are still in prison. The organization Reporters Without Borders appealed to Steinmeier before the start of his trip to push for the release of imprisoned media professionals.
Before the return flight, Steinmeier also wanted to meet with the leader of the opposition CHP party, Özgür Özel. In the local elections at the end of March, it triumphed over Erdogan’s Islamic-conservative AKP, which is now no longer the strongest force in the country for the first time in its history. In the morning, Steinmeier first laid a wreath in the mausoleum for the founder of the Republic of Turkey, Kemal Atatürk.