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EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (left) had to take a seat on the sofa at the meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (2nd from right)
Photo: Dario Pignatelli / dpa
The seating arrangement at the meeting of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the EU leaders in Ankara has caused irritation and criticism on social media.
While a large chair was reserved for EU Council President Charles Michel next to the Turkish head of state, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was assigned a seat on a sofa some distance away during the conversation on Tuesday.
There she sat across from the Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, who also took part in the conversation.
The Green Bundestag member Cem Özdemir commented on the meeting on Twitter with outrage: “Such signals are consciously set by authoritarian oppressors and machos like #Putin, #Erdogan & Co.
(...) If you can put up with it, you don't have to.
In any case, you don't get respect from the gentlemen! «In the social network it was also pointed out that the former EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker was allowed to sit at eye level at a meeting with Erdoğan
Meanwhile, the EU Commission pointed out that von der Leyen had used the meeting with Erdoğan to hold a long and very open discussion with him about women's rights and Turkey's withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention for the Protection of Women and Children from Violence respectively.
Initially, however, there was no open criticism of the seating arrangement.
One reason is that Michel, as President of the European Council, is above the EU Commission President in the protocol order of precedence.
At the meeting with Erdoğan on Tuesday, EU leaders wanted to sound out a possible expansion of relations with Turkey.
The background to this is the decisions of the EU summit one and a half weeks ago.
With him, the EU heads of state and government had agreed to gradually expand relations with Turkey again.
With this decision, the EU wants to avert the escalation of further conflicts.
mjm / dpa