ERDOGAN AND MERKEL CLASH AHEAD OF CHANCELLOR’S VISIT

The Irish Times
Monday, March 29, 2010

CHANCELLOR ANGELA Merkel and Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan have traded barbs ahead of the German leader’s state visit
today to Turkey.

Ahead of her first visit to Ankara in four years, Dr Merkel called
on the three million Turkish nationals living in Germany to make a
greater effort to integrate into their adoptive home.

Meanwhile, Mr Erdogan denied in an interview with Der Spiegel magazine
that the 1915 massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire was genocide.

Despite close business and cultural ties, Dr Merkel’s visit is unlikely
to take the edge off bilateral relations burdened by Turkey’s ambition
to achieve full EU membership.

Dr Merkel insists that Ankara should make do with a "privileged
partnership" while Mr Erdogan says full membership is the goal "from
which Turkey will not veer".

"We are already in negotiations for full membership," said Mr Erdogan,
adding "making proposals that differ from this is like shifting the
goal post during a penalty kick – absurd".

Dr Merkel picked up on a notorious 2008 speech by Mr Erdogan,
encouraging Turks living in Germany to integrate while warning them
that assimilation was a "crime against humanity".

"We don’t want assimilation but that people who have lived here for
generations integrate and participate in our society," said Dr Merkel.

"That means, of course, that the German language is learned and German
laws are respected."

She dismissed Mr Erdogan’s call for Turkish-language academies to be
set up in Germany.

With a standoff on most bilateral issues, the two leaders will hope to
make progress on an issue of mutual interest, namely Iran’s nuclear
ambitions.

But the two camps seem far away from meaningful common ground on how
best to proceed.

Dr Merkel said yesterday that if Iran "does not show transparency"
on the nuclear issue then "we must think about sanctions".

But Turkey, currently a non-permanent member of the UN Security
Council, is of a different view.

"Multiple sanctions have been placed on Iran but with what result so
far?" asked Mr Erdogan in Der Spiegel. "We need diplomacy, diplomacy,
diplomacy. Everything else threatens global peace and yields nothing
else."

In an apparent nod to Israel, he added: "At least Iran doesn’t have
any nuclear weapons at the moment . . . We don’t want any nuclear
weapons at all in this region."