#German #Turkish #diplomats #save #Istanbul
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock urged Turkey to respect human rights on Friday during an irritated visit during which she openly feuded with her counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu.
The former co-leader of Germany’s Green Party also dismissed Turkey’s territorial claims to Greek islands in the Aegean and urged Ankara not to stage a planned military invasion of northern Syria.
Baerbock paid her first visit to Turkey after holding talks in Greece that have reignited old rivalries between the two neighbors of the NATO defense alliance.
Turkey accuses Greece of illegally arming its network of islands – some of them visible from the Turkish coast.
Greece countered that Turkey was conducting provocative military operations over the region and threatening war.
“The Greek islands of Lesvos, Chios, Rhodes and many others are Greek territories and nobody has the right to question them,” Baerbock said alongside Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias in Athens.
“We cannot solve the problems of the eastern Mediterranean by escalating tensions,” she added in a joint media appearance with Cavusoglu.
Cavusoglu countered, “Why are you turning a blind eye to Greece’s illegal actions?”
Turkey and Germany developed a warm friendship in the era of former German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Germany took in millions of Turkish workers and pushed for more EU aid to Ankara to reward it for hosting people fleeing the war in Syria and other conflicts.
But Baerbock, as leader of the left-wing Green Party, has been more critical of Turkey and raised a number of what she called “difficult” issues in Istanbul.
– Missing Merkel –
Baerbock warned that Turkey’s threat to launch a new offensive against the Kurdish military in northern Syria would “only inflict more pain on the people” and help the jihadists of the Islamic State group.
She called for the release of civil society leader Osman Kavala, who was sentenced to life imprisonment this year on charges that most Western governments believe to be fabricated, and stressed that “the rights of persecuted people should be protected”.
Cavusoglu turned and looked directly at Baerbock during some of his most pointed remarks.
“Why do you mention Kavala?” asked Cavusoglu. “Because you used it. We know that you have funded Gezi events.”
Kavala was convicted of organizing and financing so-called “Gezi Park” protests against then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2013.
“When Merkel was there, Germany’s position was balanced,” said Cavusoglu. “It could mediate.”
German played a pivotal role in calming another spike in tensions between Ankara and Athens in 2020.
During Baerbock’s visit to Athens, Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias urged Germany to end a joint venture in which Turkey is producing a modern new class of submarines.
These submarines “threaten to shift the balance of power in the eastern Mediterranean,” Dendias said.
“The paradigm of revisionism must not succeed.”
Berlin has previously argued it cannot suspend a trade deal signed by Germany’s Thyssen Krupp Marine Systems.
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