Charm offensive Turkey towards Europe

ankara - The Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Cavusoglu wants to visit his German colleague this month. And he expects a 'much better year 2018.' External relations of the Turkish government, under the leadership of the increasingly authoritarian president Erdogan, have suffered considerable damage during the past year, including relations with Germany and the Netherlands.

Ankara is currently sending conciliatory messages to Western Europe. Cavusoglu told the German news agency DPA that he thinks that Berlin and Ankara are prepared to normalize the relationship. Cavusoglu called his German colleague Sigmar Gabriel 'a personal friend with whom you do not have to agree on everything. 'Gabriel has invited Cavusoglu to come and talk in his home, the Lower Saxon town of Goslar.

Cavusoglu warned that his country will not be threatened. One of the bottlenecks in the relationship is the detention of the German journalist Deniz Yücel. He has been detained in Turkey for more than ten months. Cavusoglu said that he was not happy that there was still no indictment, but that is what the judiciary is about.

Erdogan was remarkably positive about the relationship with the Netherlands last week. 'We have no problem with Germany, the Netherlands or Belgium,' he said to journalists, according to the newspaper Hürriyet. 'On the contrary, the people who are in the governments of those countries are my old friends. '