Angela Merkel: Erdogan is impressive, but I am still against him

Dinner in the library
 
We are having an important dinner in the library on the 13th floor of the Axel Spinger building; our host is the Chief Editor of the Bild Newspaper. But the main guest of the dinner is not our group, but the President of the German Christian Democratic Party, Angela Merkel.
 
She read Andrew Mango's Ataturk book on vacation
 
Present at the dinner were, including myself, the owner and CEO of the Hurriyet newspaper, Aydin Dogan, as well as the Head of the Hurriyet's Executive Committee, Vuslat Dogan. Apparently, Angela Markel had been on vacation in Spain's Canary Islands for a week. And during that week, she had read Andrew Mango's book on Ataturk. Clearly, Merkel is thinking a lot about Turkey these days, something we can tell from her lack of hesitation in taking up this dinner invitation, as well as the fact that she read the Mango book. We talked for two hours over dinner. As you might have guessed, practically the only subject of the talk was Turkey's full membership in the EU.
 
She says "AK Party," not "AKP"
 
Merkel makes no bones about the fact that she is against Turkey's possible EU membership. But there are nuances in what she says. There's a little detail about her that I wanted to pass on first though. Interestingly, while we say "AKP" while talking about PM Tayyip Erdogan's party, Merkel says "AK Party." When I ask her why, she says "When I spoke to PM Erdogan, I used to say AKP. But then he said 'Our party's name is 'AK Party.' Please use that name.'" So Merkel's terminology comes straight from the Prime Minister. And what's more, she knows that "AK Party" means "clean party."
 
Merkel says that as a politician, she likes Erdogan. She says, "PM Erdogan is an impressive poltician. He has affected me in that he has opened new perspectives, new horizons, for Turkey. Negotiations with him are difficult...he is a very good treaty maker, and he really pushes the limits."
 
We begin to talk about Turkey's possible EU membership. Aydin Dogan says to Merkel, "We are not saying take Turkey as a member tomorrow. We need to bring a few things into line, and we will do this. But why have you turned against us from the very first day?"
 
I can't make any promises about 15 years from now
 
Merkel answers Dogan with a similar openness. "Turkey is a very large country. There are problems with its population. The EU has a very mixed makeup. With an increase in the number of countries and populations, its problems become insurmountable. We do not support the idea of giving promises for 10 to 15 years from now. However few promises we give today, that's how much closes we can become." These are words we have heard from her before.
 
But she goes a step further and says: "A date was given for talks. This cannot change, whether we like it or not. If we were in power in this government, we would not have set a date, we would have postponed it. We would have left it open."
 
The stage will be left open to extreme right wingers
 
And Merkel finishes her comments like this: "The German people are worried when they look to the future. We have to take this worry seriously. If we don't, the extreme right wingers will take the stage. And that would be dangerous."
 
Well, in short, we weren't able to convince Merkel of anything that night at dinner.
 
But at least we tried.