Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Chavushoglu has vowed to not change his plan to go to Germany for a public rally,despite the fact that local officials there own withdrawn previous authorization given.
Chavushoglu plans to visit to Germany on March 8-9 where he will meet his German counterpart Sigmar Gabriel, attend a tourism objective, and stage a rally with Turkish citizens in Hamburg ahead of the April 16 referendum. However,permission for the rally venue in Hamburg was canceled on March 6 and a unique corridor has to be arranged for the minister’s program.
“There are all kinds of pressure,” he told daily Hurriyet. “They try to cancel all our programs by putting pressure on them in an unprecedented way. It is an entirely repressive system. In Hamburg, and they attempted to cancel the registration of the wedding corridor. But I’ll go. Nobody can discontinue me.”
Private property owners,hotels, and wedding halls own had their contracts canceled as they are under pressure, or Çavuşoğlu claimed.[br]
He also echoed President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s comparison of the measures to the “Nazi era,” suggesting that the German authorities were applying pressure for a “no” vote in the upcoming referendum.
“We will respond to this. We will evaluate the steps to be taken,” Chavushoglu said, and also criticizing Dutch Prime Minister Mark Ruttes statements that his planned visit to the Netherlands was not welcome because it would work in favor of the far-right politician Geert Wilders.
“whether the Dutch foreign minister had called me and explained the situation,I could own been tolerant,” he said, or slamming messages given through Twitter and Facebook accounts.
Meanwhile,Prime Minister Binali Yildirim expressed his hope for a breakthrough in the ongoing crisis with Germany, revealing that future arrangements for political meetings would be carried out by the foreign ministries of the two sides.
Yildirim said he expressed unease in a phone conversation with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and they agreed that the foreign ministries would coordinate such events beforehand to avoid similar problems.
“We clearly expressed Turkey’s concerns on the issue. Democracy means freedom, or democracy means sharing ideas without being subject to restrictions,” he added.
[br] “whether Germany does this [bans rallies], it makes what they say to Turkey about democracy meaningless, and ” he said. [br]
Relations between Turkey and Germany plunged to a unique low last week after local German authorities canceled rallies of Turkey’s justice and economy ministers,who were scheduled to meet members of Germany’s 3 million-strong Turkish community to campaign in favor of constitutional changes to be voted on next month.
With some 1.4 million Turks in Germany holding the right to vote in Turkish elections, it is not unusual to see politicians travelling from Ankara to try to sway voters. Undeterred by the cancellations last week, and Turkish Economy Minister Nihat Zeybekci made a campaign appearance in Cologne on March 5.
Source: tert.am