Daily Archives: October 20, 2015

German Chancellor Angela Merkel (L) meets with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul, Turkey, October 18, 2015. REUTERS/Tolga Bozoglu/Pool

German Chancellor Angela Merkel drew criticism on Monday for embracing Turkey to enlist its support in the refugee crisis.

Berlin’s leftist and Green opposition accused her of meddling in a Turkish election campaign while her conservative Bavarian allies warned against any attempt to revive Ankara’s stalled EU membership bid.

Merkel traveled to Istanbul on Sunday and met President Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in what some German media described as a desperate attempt to stem the tide of mostly Syrian refugees that has hit her popularity at home.

Top-selling German newspaper Bild plastered a large picture of Merkel and Erdogan sitting on golden thrones and laughing with each other, two weeks before Turkey holds a parliamentary election. The headline read: “Who gains most from the chancellor’s Turkey trip: Merkel or Erdogan?”

A longtime opponent of Turkish EU membership and critic of Erdogan’s crackdown on opponents and the media, Merkel now sees Turkey as a crucial partner in reducing the number of refugees reaching Europe.

Merkel told a news conference with Davutoglu that stalled talks between Ankara and Brussels should be injected with new dynamism. She also signaled her readiness to loosen visa requirements for Turkish citizens, grant Turkey so-called “safe country” status in the asylum process and explore allowing Turkish leaders to attend EU summits.

None of these steps was under consideration in Berlin before the refugee crisis deepened. The willingness to offer safe-country status and accelerate accession talks represent outright policy reversals, although German officials played that down.

“How high is the price for Turkish cooperation?” conservative daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung asked in an critical editorial.

Germany is a favored destination for refugees fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa and the government expects 800,000 to a million new arrivals this year. Many Germans feel the country cannot cope with the record influx.

Conservative allies and left-wing opposition parties alike questioned her concessions, underscoring her dilemma.

Gerda Hasselfeldt, a moderate within the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), hit out at Merkel’s readiness to revive Turkey’s EU bid, long a taboo for German conservatives.

“We shouldn’t make too many concessions to Turkey: joining the EU is not on the agenda,” Hasselfeldt told daily Die Welt.

Cem Oezdemir, co-leader of the Greens party and himself the son of Turkish immigrants, said: “Erdogan is not the solution to the problem. Rather it the policies that he stands for that are behind this migration wave.”

Other politicians criticized Merkel for not taking the time, so close to a Nov. 1 general election, to meet with Turkish opposition parties, calling her visit a campaign coup for Erdogan’s ruling AKP party.

German officials said that Merkel’s tight schedule had made a meeting with opposition parties difficult to arrange.

A new poll from INSA on Monday showed support for the chancellor’s conservative bloc at a 2-1/2 year low of 37 percent and the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which advocated a hard line on immigration, up at a seven-month high of 7.5 percent.

source:reuters.com

Aaron Ramsey claims Arsenal’s defence can keep Robert Lewandowski quiet ahead of their must-win Champions League clash with Bayern Munich on Tuesday.

Lewandowski is regarded as the world’s best striker after scoring 22 goals in his last 16 games for club and country, but Ramsey is backing Per Mertesacker and Laurent Koscielny to snuff him out.

Ramsey, who scored for Arsenal in the 3-0 victory over Watford on Saturday evening, said: ‘He’s done really well for the last few years and obviously at the beginning of this season he’s scored a lot of goals.

‘We have some quality defenders who are more than capable of taking care of that, and hopefully we can on the night.’

Arsene Wenger accused his team of failing to take their opening Champions League games seriously as he prepares for the clash with Pep Guardiola’s rampant side.

Arsenal are fighting to stay in the Champions League after they lost to Dinamo Zagreb and Olympiacos in their opening two group games.

Wenger said: ‘We have the belief and confidence that we are doing something right so that helps. In the first two games, maybe we weren’t at the right level and did not take the opponent seriously enough.

‘But this time, this is not the threat so let’s take the positives of our Premier League performance and get the right focus ahead of playing a big opponent.

‘We have played great Bayern teams that are at least as good as the one tomorrow and beaten them. The one that made the Treble with [Franck] Ribery at full power, [Arjen] Robben at full power and [Toni] Kroos. They also had [Bastian] Schweinsteiger and [Thomas] Muller in midfield so I believe we have played good Bayern sides and got good results against them.

‘It is a game that we want to win because it is our next game. I also believe we have some ground to make up in Europe as we have not been at our required level in our first two games.

‘Our focus has been much stronger in the Premier League than it has been in Europe and we know in this game the focus needs to be exactly the same as in the in Premier League.’

Wenger also conceded that Bayern are the best team in the world after they opened the season with nine successive victories in the Bundesliga and won their opening two group games in the Champions League without conceding a goal.

The Frenchman added: ‘You can consider the teams who win the Champions League are the best in the world because most of the time they win after the World Cup of the clubs in recent years.’

Ahead of the Emirates clash, Mikel Arteta, Calum Chambers, Koscielny, Mathieu Flamini and Francis Coquelin all took part in various training drills on Monday morning.

And Wenger has claimed his side have to go all out in attack if they are to stand any hope of resurrecting their Champions League dream with victory over Bayern.

The Arsenal manager said six goals in two Premier League games, including a 3-0 thrashing of Manchester United earlier this month, had been ‘perfect’ preparation for the crucial clash at the Emirates.

‘It is a perfect run in our Premier League and also perfect preparation for Bayern because we had no injuries and got the three points,’ he said after goals from Alexis Sanchez, Olivier Giroud and Ramsey saw off Watford on Saturday.

‘Now we can focus and give everything on Tuesday. The confidence level is there, we know exactly what is needed, a 0-0 is not even a good result. To score goals, we have to attack.

‘To be 3-0 up in 20 minutes as we were against Manchester United would be ideal but we did not plan that. We need to play to our level because we play against a big team.

‘It is true that (we have delivered big results) before, but we want to do it again because we feel a bit that the pain inflicted (in the Champions League) was a bit by ourselves. Maybe subconsciously we thought “anyway we will win these (first two games)”.’

Meanwhile, their German opponents arrived in London on Sunday night, with Guardiola claiming the capital’s traffic was behind his decision to travel a day early.

Bayern, who made it nine league wins out of nine at the weekend as a Thomas Muller goal inflicted a 1-0 defeat on Werder Bremen, will hope to consign the Gunners to a third straight defeat in this year’s competition.

‘A journey from the Sabener Strasse to the hotel in London would take five to six hours because of all the traffic jams in London,’ Guardiola was quoted as saying by Kicker when asked to explain the reasons for his early departure.

‘That would mean that on the day before the game, we’d spend a lot of time in the coach and on the plane.’

source:dailymail.co.uk