\u201cOur political values differ in many areas and yet we have common interests,\u201d Merkel said in an interview with the daily Suddeutsche Zeitung.<\/p>\n
She highlighted Turkey\u2019s important role for a political solution in Syria and in fight against terrorism, as areas where both countries share common interests.<\/p>\n
\u201cForeign policy is always conducted as a mixture of values and interests, and one also needs to find the right balance here,\u201d she said, dismissing criticism by German opposition parties about her government\u2019s Turkey policy.<\/p>\n
Asked about Ankara\u2019s stalled EU membership bid, Merkel expressed ongoing scepticism about a full membership perspective to Turkey.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe current developments after the local elections do not make it more likely that Turkey will join the European Union,\u201d she said, adding that she has always been sceptical about a full membership perspective, but favored \u201cspecial relations\u201d between the EU and Turkey.<\/p>\n
However, Merkel also supported the continuation of accession talks in an open-ended way, as this was promised to Turkey in 2005, before her Christian Democrats (CDU\/CSU) came to power in Germany.<\/p>\n
Turkey\u2019s EU membership process has long been a divisive issue in German politics, as Social Democrats have backed a full membership perspective but Christian Democrats favored a special partnership with Turkey.<\/p>\n
Ahead of next week\u2019s European Parliament elections, German conservatives and their lead candidate Manfred Weber launched a campaign against Turkey\u2019s EU membership.<\/p>\n
Weber is bidding to become the European Commission president after Jean-Claude Juncker, whose term will end in October.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chancellor Angela Merkel has underlined strategic importance of Turkey for Germany Friday, despite persistent political differences between Berlin and Ankara. \u201cOur political values differ in many areas and yet we have common interests,\u201d Merkel said in an interview with the daily Suddeutsche Zeitung. She highlighted Turkey\u2019s important role for a political solution in Syria and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":63750,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,63,17,118,103,101,194,188],"tags":[13323,7596,78478],"class_list":["post-63748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-daily","category-europe","category-hot","category-only-on-nationalturk","category-politics","category-turkey-general","category-turkey-politics","tag-eu-ministers","tag-merkel","tag-turkey-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63748\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}