German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier is making a three-day visit to Turkey, where he first met Tayyip Erdogan’s great rival, Ekrem Imamoglu.
The first stop of the visit of the German president is Istanbul, where he met with the mayor Ekrem Imamoglou.
The German president and the mayor of Istanbul visited together the Sirkeci railway station, on the European side of Istanbul, from where the first Turkish workers left in 1961 as immigrants to Germany.
These days, a photo exhibition is being hosted on the premises of the station, entitled “Nostalgia in xenitia”.
To show the close personal ties with the Turks, Frank-Walter Steinmeier took with him on the trip a Turkish immigrant who runs a kebab restaurant in Berlin.
Speaking from Istanbul’s train station, the German president said of Turkish workers that they “built our country with us, made our country strong and are at the heart of our society.”
Ekrem Imamoglou for Costas Bakoyannis: I would like to thank him for the good friendly relations we have created
During Mr Steinmeier’s tour of the train station, a group of demonstrators protested Germany’s policy towards the Palestinians, chanting “Germany is murdering, it is guilty of genocide”. The protesters were removed by the police.
On Tuesday, the German president will meet with victims of last year’s devastating earthquake in Gaziantep, southeastern Turkey, while his meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara is scheduled for Wednesday.
This is the first visit of Frank-Walter Steinmeier to Turkey in the seven years of his presidential term and he preferred to start his visit from Istanbul, instead of the capital Ankara, and meet with the mayor Imamoglu, who belongs to the Kemalist opposition .
At the airport of the city, the reception reserved for him was low-level – the prefect of Istanbul, Davut Gül, was waiting for him.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier has recently criticized Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s stance towards Israel and has previously expressed concern about democratic rights in Turkey.
There are approximately 2.8 million immigrants of Turkish origin in Germany. Of these, approximately 1.2 million are German citizens and vote in Germany.
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