Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier is traveling to Turkey on a state visit. Also included is a kebab skewer from Berlin. Does Erdogan like it?
Ankara/Berlin – Arif Keles has prepared everything for the trip with the Federal President. “The kebab skewer is already frozen,” says Keles, who is the third generation to run a grill snack bar at Berlin’s Yorckstrasse S-Bahn station. “The spit is traveling on the presidential plane.” On Monday, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier is setting off on a visit to Turkey – his first since taking office. He takes the Berlin kebab innkeeper with him as a guest of honor: Keles is supposed to serve his kebab from Berlin at the state reception on Monday evening on the Bosphorus.
It is an unusual presidential visit: Steinmeier's official contacts with the state leadership around the autocratic President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have been reduced to a minimum. Instead, Steinmeier wants to honor the close ties between the populations of both countries, especially the life's work of those Turks who have made their way to Germany as migrant workers since the 1960s - like Arif Keles' grandfather.
Steinmeier in Turkey: Federal President sets an example during his visit
“I see it as a great appreciation that I am allowed to go on the trip,” says Keles to the AFP news agency. His grandfather worked in a casting factory for years, then opened his own kebab shop in 1986 - "and now the president is taking me, as a grandson, to the homeland of my ancestors."
In Istanbul, the first stop on his trip, Steinmeier will meet people with a migration background and representatives of civil society on Monday - but no representatives of the Erdogan government. His first conversation partner in Istanbul is Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu - the most popular Turkish opposition politician, who some already see as the next president. On Tuesday, Steinmeier visited earthquake survivors in Gaziantep on the Syrian border.
“It is a signal that this journey does not begin in Ankara,” says the Federal President’s Office. He will only meet Turkish President Erdogan, with whom Steinmeier has already had many arguments, when the trip ends on Wednesday in Ankara. It is quite possible that the differences will then become apparent again.
Steinmeier counters this with a message: No matter how big the differences with Erdogan are, the Germans and the Turks share a close friendship.
Doner kebab “a kind of German national food”: Steinmeier brings cultural assets to Turkey?
And hardly anything embodies the roots of Turkish culture in everyday German life as much as the kebab. That's why the Federal President invited the Kreuzberg grill stall owner Arif Keles to come along. “The kebab has now become a kind of German national food”: This is how a Steinmeier consultant puts it and points to an estimated annual turnover of the German kebab industry of seven billion euros - a migrant success story.
With the trip shortly before the 75th birthday of the Federal Republic, Steinmeier wanted to “set the example that the life stories and life achievements of now four generations of Turkish immigrants are part of our Federal Republic,” according to the Federal President’s Office. “You belong in the heart of Germany, so to speak.”
Of course, this appreciative commitment does not capture the entire complexity of the relationship between Germany and Turkey: almost three million people of Turkish origin now live in Germany. However, relations at government level between the Federal Republic of Germany and Erdogan's Türkiye have been poor for years.
Erdogan's current support for the radical Islamic Hamas in the Gaza Strip is disturbing for the federal government. German criticism of deficiencies in democracy and the rule of law in Turkey is an ongoing issue anyway, and Erdogan always reacts angrily to such criticism.
Former Foreign Minister Steinmeier has repeatedly experienced the Turkish president's irritability; he has known Erdogan for 20 years. The fact that Steinmeier took seven years after his election as Federal President to visit Turkey for the first time as head of state speaks for itself. (afp)