German Chancellor Angela Merkel met with Turkish Prime minister Binali Yildirim, during her first official visit to Ankara after July’s failed coup, in a declared bid to bolster the relationship between the two countries that were frayed by differences over issues from the fight against terrorism to freedom of speech. The two leaders discussed Turkey’s migration deal with Europe, cooperation in the fight against the Islamic State in Syria, intelligence sharing and human rights. During a joint press conference, following their meeting, the Turkish Prime Minister stressed that “it is not deliberate if Turkey makes some mistakes when going after the hundreds of thousands of people suspected of links to the failed coup,” while emphasizing that his government was acting in accordance with Turkish law.
“Sometimes we are hearing complaints regarding the practices. There may be mistakes when we deal with such a big incident in which hundreds of thousands of people are involved but it is absolutely not deliberate. Turkey is a state of law. We will not act out of revenge. We will treat everyone with fairness under the rule of law,” said Yildirim. More than 100,000 people have been sacked or suspended from the police, military, civil service and private sector on suspicion of supporting Fetullah Gulen, a self-exiled Muslim cleric that is believed by the Turkish government to be the orchestrator of the attempted coup last July. Among them, some 40,000 people have been jailed and are pending trial.
Chancellor Merkel took the opportunity to send a signal to the new Administration in Washington, urging President Donald Trump to continue the close cooperation with Berlin, and other allies, in the battle against international terrorism, including the efforts made by the international community to eradicate the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. “I think that the fight against international terrorism is also a priority of the USA. We have a new administration there; so, we need to talk in detail about what needs to be done in Syria; how the liberation of Mosul (Iraqi city) will go on, but I see a high level of continuity in our cooperation,” said Merkel. US President Donald Trump has on several occasions promised to launch ‘a new war on terror’ vowing to eliminate the Islamic State ‘from the face of the earth’.