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Chancellor Olaf Scholz will visit Turkey next week to meet President Recep Tayyip Erdogan with the escalating conflict in the Middle East and migration on the agenda, German officials said Friday.
Scholz will hold talks with Erdogan on October 19 in Istanbul, followed by a press conference, government spokesman Wolfgang Buechner told a media briefing in Berlin.
The German chancellor last visited Turkey in March 2022, a few months after taking office.
“The war in Ukraine will be the subject of the talks, as will the situation in the Middle East. Migration and bilateral and economic policy issues will also be on the agenda,” Buechner said.
Germany’s relations are sensitive with Turkey, a fellow NATO member. Germany is home to Europe’s largest Turkish diaspora of some three million people.
German officials have in recent years raised hackles in Turkey by criticising what they see as growing authoritarianism under Erdogan.
The outbreak of the Israel-Gaza war in Gaza has further strained ties.
Erdogan has frequently attacked Israel over its actions in Gaza, labelling them “genocide”. Berlin meanwhile is a strong supporter of Israel and has defended the country’s right to self-defence, although it has also increasingly called for restraint.
When the Turkish leader visited Germany last year, he traded barbs with Scholz over the conflict.
The war was sparked by Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
According to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, 42,065 people have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, mostly civilians.
There have also been tensions between Berlin and Ankara over immigration.
Berlin announced at the end of September that it had agreed a plan with Turkey under which Berlin would step up deportations of failed Turkish asylum seekers — only for Turkey to swiftly deny any such deal had been struck.
The Scholz government has been under heightened pressure after a series of violent crimes and extremist attacks committed by asylum seekers.
When it comes to Ukraine, Germany has strongly supported Kyiv in its fight against Moscow since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, and is Ukraine’s second-biggest military backer.
Turkey has sought to balance ties between its two Black Sea neighbours Russia and Ukraine since the outbreak of the war. Ankara has sent drones to Ukraine but shied away from Western-led sanctions on Moscow.
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