Ahead of the NATO summit in Turkey, both the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens are pressing the German government to condemn the highly critical remarks made by Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan.
The Green party’s Vice Spokesperson, Agnieszka Brugger, told Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland that the federal government must not tolerate Fidan describing Israel as a “burden on humanity.” While acknowledging the difficulty for the government-which faces the dilemma of having to ensure a successful NATO summit in Ankara-the Greens insisted that remaining silent is unacceptable. According to Brugger, the German government should show a clear stance, based not only on Germany’s historical responsibility concerning the safety of people in Israel but simply because state representatives must never be allowed to speak about an entire group of people in such a manner.
Hakan Fidan had made his controversial statement during an interview with CNN Türk last Thursday. Initially labeling Israel a “shared problem for humanity,” he later elaborated that these people had become “a burden that humanity can no longer carry.” The transcript of the conversation is reportedly available on the Turkish Foreign Ministry’s homepage, and Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa`ar publicly condemned the statements on X last Friday, calling them an “incitement to genocide.”
The German Social Democrats (SPD) in the Bundestag referenced a statement from their European Policy Spokesman, Markus Töns. Töns argued that Fidan’s declaration had crossed a clear red line and stated that such unrestrained and delegitimizing language used by a foreign minister of a NATO member state cannot go without consequences. He insisted that the federal government is now obliged to provide an unambiguous position on the matter. Furthermore, some members of the CDU parliamentary group had also denounced Fidan’s remarks.
In response to inquiries from RND, the German Foreign Office declined to issue an explicit comment regarding the incident.
