Global Geo-political Series: German-Turkey relations worsen

While the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hailed a new era in relations between the United States and Turkey, the relations with the EU seems to be deteriorating. The relations between the two started deteriorating especially since last year’s coup as the EU granted asylum to some of the soldiers in the coup and barred Turkish officials from campaigning in favor of a referendum aimed at giving the President Erdogan more executive power. Erdogan narrowly won the referendum all he needs to do now is to win an election to have those powers. The relations deteriorated further after the referendum win. President Erdogan handed an ultimatum to the EU to start visa liberalization to give Turkish citizen visa-free access to the EU as it feels it kept its side of the bargain by taking in refugees back from the EU.

Latest row broke out between Germany and Turkey as the Germany accepted requests from two asylum seeking soldiers. In response to that, Turkey didn’t allow German politicians to visit soldiers at its Incirlik air base. This had a follow up from the German Chancellor Angela Merkel threatening to withdraw all German soldiers from Turkey who are serving there as part of the NATO group. This worsening relation between Turkey and EU is a major threat to the future of NATO.