Peter Steudtner, arrested along with human rights activists from a seminar in a hotel in Büyükada on July 5, was one of the 10 German citizens the Erdoğan regime has been holding hostage.

His arrest had been the feather that broke the camel’s back for the relationship between the Merkel and Erdoğan governments. Right after Steudtner’s arrest, foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel announced a series of sanctions against Turkey. Among these were a travel warning for Turkey, cutting off EU funds for Ankara and “reviewing credit guarantees”.

While most of these sanctions remained just for show, it was “en vogue”, so to speak, to object loudly to Erdoğan in campaign trails before the elections on September 24. After the elections resulted in Merkel’s victory, the relationship with the Turkish state was “reset to factory settings” with a soft transition.

First, in Brussels Merkel forgot the promises she made in Berlin. Then, Berliner activist Peter Steudtner, facing accusations of “membership to a terrorist organization” and “aiding and abetting a terrorist organization”, was released on October 25 in a surprise verdict. Former chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s meeting with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is said to have facilitated this development.

ALTMEIR FLEW TO ANKARA ON A SECRET MISSION

After Schröder, who Erdoğan calls a “friend”, pried the door open for a close relationship with the Turkish state, Chancellor Merkel’s undersecretary Peter Altmaier flew to Ankara by late September.

According to prominent German news journals Focus, Altmeier, responsible for Merkel’s private affairs, met with Erdoğan in “a secret mission”. A high ranking German government representative who wished to stay anonymous spoke to the journal said, “We respect Schröder’s efforts, but it was Altmaier who opened the door.”

The representative implied that “great concessions” were made in the meeting with Erdoğan and said, “A great reward was offered in return for Steudtner’s release, a bigger one would not be possible.” Peter Altmaier being chosen by the Merkel government to negotiate with Erdoğan is no coincidence either.

WHY WAS ALTMAIER CHOSEN?

During the days of peak tension and crises with Turkey, Altmaier gave positive messages for Ankara contrary to both Chancellor Merkel’s party CDU and politicians from other parties. Altmaier argued that ties with the Turkish government should never be severed, and said “The only democratic country in the region is Turkey, we must not lose them” despite all the anti-democratic practices of the Erdoğan regime. In this sense, Altmaeier was a “reasonable” proponent.

What concessions Germany made for the easing of tensions with the Erdoğan regime, however, remained a cause for concern. Ankara’s demands from Berlin in the last year could be summed up under three topics: An expansion of the Customs Union agreement, extradition of asylum seekers in Germany following the July 15 coup attempt and Germany taking more strict precautions against the Kurdish freedom struggle.

Not only was the expansion of the Customs Union out of the question, but before September 24, Chancellor Merkel was promising that the accession talks for the EU for Turkey would be frozen. She has done everything she can since to push this promise under the rug in Brussels. And the extradition of asylum seekers allegedly tied to the Gülen group was also out of the question. On many occasions, German officials stated that they “would need to change the constitution for that”.

WAS THE “GRAND PRIZE” KURDS?

The only demand Ankara had left was a more active opposition to the Kurdish movement. With the German police attacking the march for Kurdish People’s Leader Abdullah Öcalan in Düsseldorf on Saturday made clear what “grand prize” Berlin gave the Erdoğan government.

Police units from both the NRW and several other states were stationed in Düsseldorf on the day the Kurds were attacked, and around the same time Sigmar Gabriel, the social democratic politician at the last month of his duty as foreign minister and in politics in general, was in a meeting with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu in Antalya, Turkey.

Gabriel’s photograph with Çavuşoğlu on his last days was received with pleasure by social democrats and the Greens. SPD politician Niels Annen spoke to German news agency DPA and said, “We have finally received happy news regarding a mutual dialogue.”