{"id":16714,"date":"2018-09-29T04:23:57","date_gmt":"2018-09-29T04:23:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=16714"},"modified":"2018-09-29T04:23:57","modified_gmt":"2018-09-29T04:23:57","slug":"germany-and-turkey-aim-for-four-way-talks-on-syria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=16714","title":{"rendered":"Germany and Turkey aim for four-way talks on Syria"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Germany, Turkey<\/a>, Russia and France will hold a meeting on the situation in Syria’s war-torn Idlib province in October.<\/p>\n

German Chancellor Angela Merkel<\/a>\u00a0said on Friday she discussed the plan in a meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan<\/a>\u00a0and they had agreed on the four-way talks.<\/p>\n

The chancellor’s comments came amid a rare official visit by Erdogan to Germany<\/a> with a busy agenda ranging from the war in Syria<\/a> to the arrest of German citizens and Turkey’s currency crisis in the European Union candidate country.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Berlin and Ankara, at odds over a variety of issues for years, recently toned down their rhetoric, signalling a new phase in diplomatic ties.<\/p>\n

Speaking at a press conference after their meeting, Merkel and Erdogan stressed the importance of maintaining and enhancing Turkey-Germany relations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While Merkel said she believed the countries have “a common strategic interest in good relations”, on questions of how a democratic, free and open society looks, “there are also deep differences”.<\/p>\n

Erdogan said he wanted to advance a “win-win scenario”, but added that Germany should respect Turkey’s judicial system.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jailed Germans<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Merkel said she pushed for the release of Germans imprisoned in Turkey during the talks with Erdogan<\/span>.<\/p>\n

The detention of what Germany says are 35 of their citizens for what it considers political reasons has been one of the deepest irritants to relations between the two countries.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Reporting from Berlin, Al Jazeera’s Jonah Hull said a meeting with Erdogan is not something Merkel would have wanted a year ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Turkey is in an economic crisis, that’s something Germany is very worried about,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“And there are other issues – the migration crisis, Syria as well – that would really benefit from better relations between the two. So she had to grit her teeth a little bit.”<\/p>\n

Barin Kayaoglu, an assistant professor at the American University of Iraq, said Erdogan’s desire to improve relations with Germany was tied to deteriorating relations between Turkey and the United States.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“The past summer has been very tough on Ankara’s relations with the US,” he told Al Jazeera, adding that the problems had negatively affected the Turkish economy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“My reading of it is that Ankara is hoping to use its relations with the German-led EU to perhaps ease the meltdown that the Turkish lira suffered last summer and the continuing risks that face the Turkish economy.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Merkel and Erdogan are set to continue talks on Saturday.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\n SOURCE: Al Jazeera and news agencies<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Germany, Turkey, Russia and France will hold a meeting on the situation in Syria’s war-torn Idlib province in October. German Chancellor Angela Merkel\u00a0said on Friday she discussed the plan in a meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan\u00a0and they had agreed on the four-way talks. The chancellor’s comments came amid a rare official visit by…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":16715,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}