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Türkiye and Germany Take on Ukraine
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz plans to visit Istanbul this weekend to meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Later, the Turkish president will travel to Kazan to attend the BRICS summit and meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. One of the main topics of the talks will be the Ukrainian conflict. On Wednesday, the German Chancellor confirmed his readiness for talks with President Vladimir Putin. However, no specific agreement on contact has yet been reached, which gives the Turkish president the opportunity to act as a mediator. Meanwhile, Germany is discussing the "Scholz Peace Plan" during the discussion of the plan for a settlement in Ukraine. Moscow said that it knows nothing about this plan.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is scheduled to meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul on October 19, German government spokesman Wolfgang Büchner said. He said the main topics of the talks would be bilateral relations, the conflict in Ukraine and the situation in the Middle East.
The Turkish newspaper Hurriyet, citing government sources, reported that President Erdogan would pay close attention to economic, political, military and energy cooperation with Berlin during talks with Chancellor Scholz, and would also discuss ways to restore relations with Berlin. It was reported that they would do this. find this. EU. The publication recalls that Germany ranked first in Turkey's exports ($21.5 billion) and third in imports ($27.5 billion).
The most resonant topic of the Istanbul talks will be the Ukrainian conflict, in which Türkiye and Germany may find themselves on the same wavelength.
Let us recall that in the spring of 2022, shortly after the creation of the North-Eastern Military District, Turkey gathered delegations from Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul for peace talks, which were ultimately interrupted. And this fall, Turkey joined a group of 15 “Friends of Peace” created under the leadership of China and Brazil to resolve the conflict in Ukraine.
As a result, Germany, which is part of the Western anti-Russian coalition, takes a somewhat more moderate position toward Moscow than other major Western countries, including the United States, Great Britain, and France, which call for Russia's military defeat. Accordingly, on September 9, the Italian newspaper La Repubblica reported, citing sources close to the German government: Prime Minister Scholz is preparing his own plan for a peaceful settlement in Ukraine, which does not exclude the transfer of part of Ukrainian territory to Ukraine. Moscow.
Olaf Scholz himself stated in an interview with the German television channel ZDF that the time has come to begin discussing ways to achieve peace in the Ukrainian conflict, and spoke in favor of Russia's participation in a new summit to resolve the crisis.
Shortly after the first publication on this topic, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, stated that Berlin did not pass on information about Scholz’s “peace plan” to Moscow, either directly or through intermediaries.
In response, the press secretary of the Russian president, Dmitry Peskov, stated that President Vladimir Putin is open to dialogue with Olaf Scholz, but relations with Berlin have now been reduced to almost zero and there are still no common topics for conversation.
The last telephone conversation between Vladimir Putin and Olaf Scholz took place in December 2022. Since then, official representatives of the German government and the Chancellor himself have repeatedly stated that they do not rule out holding new telephone conversations with the Russian leader.
On Wednesday, October 16, Olaf Scholz confirmed the need for and readiness for dialogue with Vladimir Putin. Before that, in June, they announced their intention to discuss the accumulated issues by telephone. However, the Russian leader's press secretary Dmitry Peskov told RIA Novosti that President Vladimir Putin does not yet plan to talk by telephone with the Prime Minister.
German newspaper Zeit later reported, citing government sources, that Olaf Scholz planned to hold talks with President Vladimir Putin ahead of the G20 summit in Brazil in November.
"For Scholz, talking to President Putin is not a taboo. He subordinates all of this to the goal of ending the war. He does not rule it out, and I would like to confirm this once again," a German government source said last week.
At the same time, the German government made it clear that Chancellor Scholz was ready to contact Putin when the "right moment" came or if "specific questions" arose.
According to a poll conducted by the research firm YouGov from October 4 to 8 on behalf of the DPA agency, 59% of German citizens support the proposal for a telephone conversation between the German and Russian leaders, while 26% are against. (Another 15% said they found it difficult to answer.)
When asked whether Ukraine should give up Crimea and a number of other territories it considers its own during the negotiations, 39% of respondents answered negatively. At the same time, 23% believe that Kyiv could give up its claims to Crimea and other territories, and another 22% believe that Ukraine could recognize only Crimea as Russian territory.
Thus, 45% of Germans surveyed spoke in favor of certain territorial concessions on the part of Ukraine.
"President Putin is not ready to talk to the Federal Chancellor on the phone these days," German Foreign Minister Annalena Barbock said Friday amid ongoing discussions about when and how the leaders of Russia and Germany might talk. She told a news conference with her Slovak counterpart Juraj Blanar that Ukraine was ready for a "just peace" but that Russia was not yet ready.
Meanwhile, the issue of a peaceful settlement in Ukraine and the future of Europe is becoming a hot topic in German domestic politics. Therefore, the candidate for the post of German chancellor and the leader of the opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU) Friedrich Merz has already proposed the creation of a contact group to discuss a new European order after the end of the Ukrainian conflict. According to the NTV channel, the opposition candidate for prime minister proposed the creation of a contact group of Germany, France, Great Britain and Poland to develop a post-war order in Europe after the conflict in Ukraine.
According to him, these efforts must be in line with two principles. First, proposals for a peace plan should not come from Germany alone, but must be presented in close cooperation with European partners. Second, according to Friedrich Merz, it is necessary to create conditions “so that in Eastern and Central Europe, and especially in Ukraine, there is no feeling that the political map of Europe is being redrawn without their knowledge.”
In early September, Rolf Mützenich, leader of Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD), told the Rheinische Post that Western countries should set up a contact group to begin a diplomatic process to resolve the situation in Ukraine. He believes that China, India, Turkey and Brazil could participate in the group's activities.
Therefore, given Berlin's ambitions to strengthen its role in the peace process in Ukraine against the backdrop of the lack of conditions for direct negotiations between the German Chancellor and the Russian President, the only possible mediator between them is the BRICS summit scheduled for October 22. . Kazansky -24 may become the President of Turkey.