Turkish President Recep Erdogan on Friday urged ethnic Turks in Germany to reject its main parties in upcoming elections, prompting a sharp warning from Berlin to stop the “unprecedented” meddling.
Erdogan called on ethnic Turks to ignore German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and their partners in the grand ruling coalition, the Social Democratic Party (SPD).
They should also reject the Greens, he said, branding all three parties “enemies of Turkey.”
The Turkish president’s attack — one of his strongest-ever tirades against any EU state — escalated an already intensifying diplomatic crisis between two NATO allies with long-standing historical links.
German Minister of Foreign Affairs Sigmar Gabriel of the SPD was quick to react, condemning Erdogan’s comments as an “unprecedented act of interference.”
“We expect foreign governments to not interfere in our internal affairs,” Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said on Twitter.
Erdogan issued his call in televised comments to reporters in Istanbul, Turkey, after Friday prayers.
‘ENEMIES OF TURKEY’
“I tell all my kinsmen in Germany ... not to vote for them. Neither the Christian Democrats nor the SPD nor the Greens. They are all enemies of Turkey,” he said.
He accused the SPD and CDU of playing a game of “the more you beat up Turkey, the more votes you get” during the election campaign.
“You need to support political parties there now which do not display enmity to Turkey,” he said.
Erdogan did not make it clear which German political party he would like people to support in the polls for the Bundestag on Sept. 24.
However, he said he expected voters of Turkish origin to “teach a lesson to the parties which are disrespectful to Turkey” when they cast their votes in a “struggle for honor.”
Tensions have spiralled between Germany and Turkey in recent months.
Berlin has lambasted Ankara over the magnitude of the crackdown that followed last year’s failed coup, which has seen several German citizens arrested, including journalists.
‘TRAITORS’
The opposition Greens have pushed for a tougher line against Ankara.
The Greens’ coleader Cem Ozdemir, who is himself of Turkish origin, said Erdogan’s comments showed that people who support democracy and oppose repression and corruption in Turkey are “quite simply considered to be traitors and enemies.”
Erdogan said it was not Turkey’s responsibility to reduce the tension as Germany was to blame, even accusing Berlin of being out of step with EU membership requirements.
However, Gabriel denounced his comments as “an unprecedented act of interference in the sovereignty of our country.”
Erdogan was seeking to incite people in Germany against each other, he said.
The SPD’s Schulz in a tweet said Erdogan had “lost all sense of proportion.”
“And all the more we stand on the side of all those who are struggling for a free and democratic Turkey,” he added.
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