Federal chairman of The Greens, Cem Oezdemir in conversation with chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) during failing exploratory talks between the CDU, CSU, FDP and Green Party in Berlin, Germany, 10 November 2017. Gregor Fischer/Press Association. All rights reserved.After the September 2017 federal elections in Germany, the conservative Union parties, CDU/CSU, the liberal FDP party and the Green party set out to form the so-called Jamaica coalition government, which have failed after the liberal party withdrawal in mid-November and may lead to a minority coalition government (CDU/CSU and Green party). Ever since the 2002 federal election campaign, when the then German chancellor Gerhard Schröder was reelected, mainly because of his game-changing refusal to support the US’s Iraq invasion, contention over foreign policy has been absent from Berlin’s political competition. Hence, the Bundestag has predominantly seen largely unified positions, also with regard to Ankara. The political situation in Turkey and the combination of an electorally soaring populist radical-right challenger party and a deliberately oppositional Social Democratic party prophesy stormy times ahead for German-Turkish relations.
In the last decade or so, German foreign policy has been largely characterized by a broadly unified stance towards Turkey. Berlin perceived the first ten years of AKP rule as moderately positive. On the EU level, EU accession negotiations with Turkey commenced in 2005 and Germany, holding vast leverage in EU politics, proved to be far from vetoing the opening of accession talks. However, the authoritarian suppression of the 2013 Gezi protests in Istanbul darkened Germany’s view of Turkey; and its image of the then prime minister and current president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, was accordingly impaired.
