If Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had not called Israel a “terrorist state” and Hamas a “liberation organization” a few days ago, the visit he made today in Berlin would have been a formality. The Turkish president’s words in the context of the war in Gaza felt so bad in Germany that prior to that visit, the tabloid Bild, the country’s most read newspaper, asked on its front page what the man who hated Israel had come looking for. The agenda of issues discussed by Erdogan with President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and later with Chancellor Olaf Scholz, was extensive, but here only one thing was interesting: Would Erdogan dare to repeat his opinion about Israel on German soil and if he did, what? Will Scholz say?
Until the last moment, the holding of a joint press conference was not included in Erdogan’s visit, perhaps to avoid what happened last August with the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, when, in reference, he said that Israel had committed 50 massacres of Palestinians since the middle of the last century. “50 massacres, 50 holocausts.” The German government spokesman hastily closed the press conference. Scholz was criticized for remaining silent.
The chancellor could not allow another mistake and therefore, in the media appearance he offered with Erdogan prior to their working dinner, Scholz was the first to bring up the topic. He stood unambiguously on Israel’s side and defended its right, without limits, to defend the Jewish state in response to Hamas attacks, although he said he regretted the suffering of the Palestinian population. “Israel’s right to exist is irrefutable for us. There is no place for anti-Semitism in our country,” Scholz said.
Erdogan was equally clear. “The world only talked about the Hamas attacks, but neglected Israel’s reaction and the deaths in Gaza. There are already 13,000 Palestinians murdered, hospitals, mosques and churches have been bombed. As a Muslim, I react. Why don’t they do it? “Christians too?” said the Turkish president. “They kill women, children and the elderly indiscriminately. Are we going to remain silent about this? Are we not going to raise our voices? And, if we do not raise our voices, if we do nothing, how will we pay the price of history?” he asked. . It was the first time since Israel began the destruction of Gaza that a head of government spoke in those terms in Germany.
The German Chancellor, without losing his calm, reiterated his commitment to “humanitarian pauses” in Gaza, but put Israel’s “right to self-defense” and the need to neutralize the threat posed by the Islamist group Hamas without being “challenged.” On it.
Erdogan moderated his tone out of courtesy to the host, expressing understanding for the special German sensitivity due to the Holocaust, but without giving up the darts: “You cannot compare Hamas with Israel, a country with nuclear weapons even if it denies it,” “If When talking about Hamas hostages, we must also think about the Palestinians held hostage by Israel,” were some of his taglines.
Scholz left without a response to a German journalist’s question about whether Germany should not rethink its relations with Turkey and more specifically arms exports due to Erdogan’s anti-Israeli position. But the Turkish president gave it and as an order: “There are many countries that manufacture weapons, if we do not acquire them in Germany it will be somewhere else.” The Turkish government hopes to obtain German approval to purchase 40 Eurofighter aircraft for the Turkish Air Force, having already obtained it from the other European consortium partners.
Erdogan had not visited Berlin for three and a half years. The Turkish president always carries a high diplomatic risk and Berlin had tried to delay the moment. The last time Erdogan set foot on German soil was in 2020, at a summit in Libya, although his last state visit was five years ago. It is possible that after the Turkish elections last spring, which Erdogan won again, Scholz found no reason to delay it further, especially when he had already been received by Erdogan in Ankara with military honors.
There were no honors for the Turkish president, but his visit only lasted half a day. Initially, it had been considered that Erdogan would attend the friendly match between Germany and Turkey at the Olympiastadion in Berlin on Saturday with Scholz, but that photo could have been interpreted as support for an anti-Semitic president and Germany, at this time more than ever, cannot stage friendship with the enemy of the friend. The only public deference to Erdogan has been a security operation in which 2,800 police officers have participated. Areas of his route were cut off. The small but noisy demonstrations that he had planned due to his attitude towards Israel, he has not seen or heard.
Erdogan, who traveled with his Turkish Foreign Minister, Hakan Fidan, is used to criticism and redress, but he knows that, above all, Turkey is a card that cannot be missing from the geopolitical deck. And he, although he acts like a souk merchant, is trustworthy. He has been in the agreement on migration reached with the European Union when former Chancellor Angela Merkel, overwhelmed by the arrival of refugees from Syria and Afghanistan, managed to get Erdogan to act as a tourniquet. He is needed to mitigate the flow of immigrants to the European Union, he is a NATO member and has troops in Syria.
Turkey has a privileged geographical location and its president has the skin of an elephant and the brain of a strategist. He is able to sell drones to Ukraine and favor a grain deal without damaging his relations with Russia. In the Middle East he tries to do the same. In Berlin he has offered to try to stop the bloodbath in Gaza. “Germany with her contacts and the rest with ours should do everything possible to prevent the expansion of the conflict,” Erdogan stressed. Scholz didn’t even flinch, although the objective seems to be the same.