display
Brussels / Ankara (dpa) - The EU Commission was outraged by the seating arrangements at the EU-Turkey meeting in Ankara.
A spokesman made it clear that, from her point of view, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen should have been placed on an equal footing with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and EU Council President Charles Michel.
"The president was clearly surprised," he said.
But she preferred to talk about substantive issues.
At the meeting with Erdogan in the Turkish presidential palace on Tuesday, a large chair was reserved for Michel next to the Turkish head of state.
Von der Leyen, on the other hand, was assigned a seat on a sofa some distance away from the two.
There she sat across from the Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Cavusoglu, who also took part in the conversation.
display
Among other things, it was reminded on Twitter that the former EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker was allowed to sit at eye level at meetings with Erdogan.
The Green Bundestag member Cem Özdemir commented: «Such signs are set by authoritarian oppressors & machos like #Putin, #Erdogan & Co deliberately.
(...) If you can put up with it, you don't have to.
In any case, you don't get respect from men like that! "
Von der Leyen's spokesman stressed that incidents like the one in the presidential palace in Ankara should not be repeated.
Precautions will now be taken for this.
The commission also pointed out that von der Leyen had used the meeting with Erdogan to hold a long and very open discussion with him about women's rights and Turkey's withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention on the Protection of Women and Children from Violence .
At the meeting with Erdogan on Tuesday, EU leaders discussed a possible expansion of the EU's relations with Turkey.
The background to this is the decisions of the EU summit one and a half weeks ago.
With him, the EU heads of state and government had agreed to gradually expand relations with Turkey again.
With this decision, the EU wants to avert the escalation of further conflicts.
display
In terms of migration policy and especially in the context of the migration deal concluded with Ankara in 2016, the EU is counting on Turkey as a partner to prevent refugees from continuing to travel to Europe.
Last year, the dispute between Greece and Turkey over Ankara's controversial natural gas research in the eastern Mediterranean had come to a dangerous point.
The EU threatened Turkey with severe sanctions in December.
Ankara later ended the controversial gas exploration and signaled readiness to talk.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210407-99-115384 / 2
display
Video of the visit of the EU leaders to Erdogan
Tweet with pictures from previous EU-Turkey meetings