German Chancellor Angela Merkel holds a
press conference during an EU leaders
summit with Turkey on migrants crisis in
Brussels on March 7, 2016.
European Union leaders will on March 7
back closing down the Balkans route used by
most migrants to reach Europe, diplomats
said, after at least 25 more people drowned
trying to cross the Aegean Sea en route to
Greece. The declaration drafted by EU
ambassadors on March 6 will be announced
at a summit in Brussels on March 7, set to
also be attended by Turkish Prime Minister
Ahmet Davutoglu. / AFP / ALAIN JOCARD
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said
some political developments in Turkey were
a source of “great concern” and pledged to
address them during a visit to the country
on Monday.
Merkel, in an interview published Sunday,
said she was ready to discuss “all the
important questions” with Turkish President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan when they meet in
Istanbul on the sidelines of a UN-backed
summit on humanitarian relief work.
“Naturally some developments in Turkey
are a source of great concern for us,” the
German leader told the Frankfurter
Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung at a time when
Erdogan has been accused by Western
critics of an increasingly authoritarian
style.
She said a decision last week by the Turkish
legislature to strip scores of lawmakers of
their parliamentary immunity would have
“serious consequences” for Kurdish
politicians, a fact that filled her “with great
concern”.
Merkel also said she regretted that “the
process of rapprochement and
reconciliation with the Kurds was aborted
in the past year”.
While Berlin, like Ankara, viewed the
banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) as a
terrorist organisation, she said, the Kurdish
population must have an “equal place and a
good future in Turkey”.
The European Union and Turkey struck an
agreement in March to limit the flow of
refugees into the EU, under which Turkey
agreed to take back illegal migrants while
getting aid for hosting refugees and gaining
eased visa rules for the EU.
Merkel defended the controversial deal that
her government spearheaded and rejected
the notion that the 28-member bloc had
made itself too dependent on Ankara.
“Of course, there are interdependencies —
or you can simply call it the need to balance
our interests,” Merkel told the newspaper.
She said that, despite such mutual
dependencies, Germany was always ready
to voice criticism on developments in a
country, “whether in public or in private”.
The visa deal with the EU has been in
jeopardy over Ankara’s reluctance to alter
its counter-terror laws, a requirement of
the agreement, prompting Erdogan to make
a series of critical statements about the EU
in recent weeks.
Merkel said that she was watching closely
how Turkey was meeting its obligations
under the agreement and said that “at the
moment it fulfils them reliably, and of
course I will speak about the state of affairs
with the Turkish president”.
