Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier met with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the end of his three-day visit to Turkey. At the start, he welcomed his guest from Germany in Ankara with military honors, including a gun salute. Both then retreated for a longer conversation.
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 on October 7 in Israel but which Erdogan describes as a liberation organisation. 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 the group’s foreign affairs chief Ismail Haniya.
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.
