Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will visit Germany next Friday.
He will speak in Berlin with, among others, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
A German government spokesperson confirmed the visit on Friday after weeks of speculation. Erdogan and Scholz will discuss “various political issues” during a dinner at the Chancellery on Friday evening. Before that meeting, Erdogan first speaks with Steinmeier.
Erdogan’s visit comes amid heightened tensions over the Israeli genocide in Gaza. He repeatedly lashes out at the Zionist apartheid state and states that the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas is not a terrorist organization.
Israel’s allies such as the European Union (EU) and the United States (US) consider Hamas a terrorist organization and have given Israel free rein, weapons, money and diplomatic immunity to massacre the Palestinian people.
In four weeks, Israel killed 11,000 Palestinians, including 8,000 women and children. However, the US and the EU continue to insist on Israel’s right to self-defense. And according to Erdogan, that makes them partly guilty of genocide.
The Turkish president last visited Germany in 2020, when Angela Merkel was still chancellor. Germany has the largest Turkish community outside Turkey.
About 3 million people with a Turkish background live there and they also form the largest Islamic community in the country, who have increasingly become victims of Muslim hatred since the increased tension in the Middle East.
