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The Green Bundestag member Cem Özdemir has sharply criticized a meeting between EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Council President Charles Michel with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Erdogan wants to turn off the opposition, get out of the Istanbul Convention for the Protection of Women and bring hundreds of thousands of innocent people to justice, the foreign expert wrote on Twitter on Tuesday.
The fact that the EU leaders are now meeting Erdogan “to give gifts” is “Brussels self-dwarfing” and “a mockery of all democrats in Turkey”.
The background to the trip by Michel and von der Leyen to Ankara this Tuesday is based on agreements made at the EU summit one and a half weeks ago.
With him, the heads of state and government had agreed to gradually expand relations with Turkey again.
Among other things, preparations are to begin for negotiations on expanding the customs union.
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The resolutions are intended to give Turkey an incentive to look constructively for a solution to conflicts with Greece and Cyprus.
Among other things, they concern, until recently, Turkish gas explorations near the Greek islands and off Cyprus.
"The Turkish leadership must deliver"
In the dispute, the EU threatened Turkey with severe sanctions last December.
The country then ended the controversial gas exploration and signaled readiness to talk.
The CSU politician and MEP Manfred Weber emphasized that an expansion of the customs union with Turkey was not yet pending in his view.
"First of all, the Turkish leadership has to deliver," commented the group leader of the Christian Democrats.
It is also clear that Turkey's accession to the EU would be an illusion.
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Von der Leyen and Michel wanted to meet Erdogan on Tuesday afternoon.
A conversation with representatives of United Nations organizations and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) had been planned beforehand.
The main focus should be on future support for Syrian refugees in Turkey, but also on Turkey's recent withdrawal from the agreement on the protection of women.