According to former Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, the crisis in Turkey harbors serious security risks for Germany and Europe. "We have to do everything in our own interest to keep Turkey in the West," the SPD politician told the editorial network Germany. Otherwise, even the nuclear armament of a politically isolated Turkey threatens in the long run.

Germany and Europe must give the clear signal that they do not participate in the economic destabilization of Turkey by US President Donald Trump. "The US is now doing something that I do not think you can do among NATO partners: they apply sanctions and try to push an already economically depressed country over the cliff." Earlier, Gabriel had demanded a tougher gait towards Trump (read an interview with him here).

The US is far away. But in Europe they will pay the price if Turkey "faltered". Explicitly Gabriel called economic turmoil, a possible increase in numbers of refugees as well as the danger of a NATO withdrawal of Turkey.

Gabriel asked what would be done by a NATO that would continue to break away from NATO. His response: "I fear that sooner or later nationalist forces in Turkey - just like in Iran and North Korea - will resort to the atomic bomb to make themselves invulnerable." Already the new investment pledges from Qatar in the billions amount are a sign "for drifting Ankara in an uncertain direction".

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AFP Economic Crisis in Turkey How Erdogan governs his land

Reactions to Nahles suggestion of German Turkey help

The SPD chairman Andrea Nahles had previously brought German help for Turkey into the conversation. "It can create the situation in which Germany must help Turkey - regardless of the political conflicts with President Erdogan," she told the newspapers of the spark media group. "Turkey is a NATO partner that we can not care less, and it is in everyone's interest that Turkey remain economically stable and curbed currency turmoil." There were different reactions to Nahles utterances:

  • From the point of view of CDU foreign policy official Jürgen Hardt, financial aid for Turkey, which is in financial crisis, is only in question if the government in Ankara changes course. "The cause of the economic and monetary crisis in Turkey are the negligent statements of President Erdogan with regard to the independence of the central bank and the rule of law," said Hardt the "Rheinische Post".
  • FDP foreign policy politician Alexander Graf Lambsdorff said Turkey's self-inflicted crisis is far too big for Germany to end alone. Instead, the federal government should convince Ankara to accept an aid program from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), he told the Augsburger Allgemeine. In the "world" he called the Nahles push "naive and out of place". Economic aid does not stabilize the global financial system, only the Erdogan system.
  • Greens foreign policy leader Omid Nouripour considers aid possible under certain conditions: "And the condition must be Turkey's return to democracy and the rule of law," he told the World. "It can not be done with a turkey running with seven league boots towards dictatorship."
  • Green Party leader Katrin Göring-Eckardt similarly argued in the "Augsburger Allgemeine": "Turkey will only come out again if the Turkish government revises its authoritarian and increasingly unpredictable course." Anyone who, like Erdogan, imprisons political opponents and journalists and refuses freedom of expression and human rights, "prevents even confidence in the economy and a political rapprochement is possible".