Germany says Hamburg no place for Erdogan rally as G-20 meets
As Turkish-German tension continues to simmer, Germany has denied the Turkish president's request for a rally on the sidelines of the G-20 summit and a German former speaker of the European Parliament calls for an outright ban on pro-Erdogan rallies in Germany.
It looks like Turkish-German relations are not out of the woods.
On June 29, the German government denied Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s request to hold a rally for Turkish Germans on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Hamburg. German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel called Erdogan’s request “not a good idea” and added, “We do not have the intention to allow that other countries’ domestic conflicts be imported into our population.”
Former European Parliament Speaker Martin Schulz was even more forceful than his fellow German. Schulz called for an outright ban on Erdogan’s rallies. Schulz said, “Foreign politicians, who [trample] our values at home, must not have a stage for speeches in Germany. … I do not want Mr. Erdogan, who is holding dissidents and journalists in Turkey, to hold large-scale events in Germany.”
In response, Ambassador Huseyin Muftuoglu, the spokesman for the Turkish Foreign Ministry, called Schulz’s remarks “regrettable and unacceptable.” The Turkish government condemned the German politicians’ comments.
