Turkey has responded to the controversy over the protocol incident that took place last Tuesday in Ankara, where the president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen remained without a chair while the president of the European Council Charles Michel and the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan they took their places on the two armchairs with their respective flags behind them, reaffirming that the “standard protocol” was followed during the meeting.
“Protocol and indications have been respected,” the Turkish Foreign Minister said this morning Mevlut Cavusoglu, rejecting the accusations from Europe. “We have now unfair accusations and attacks, Turkey is not a country that receives guests for the first time. The protocol was respected to the letter and we never lacked our hospitality, on this as on all other occasions ”.
“The units” responsible for the protocol of Turkey and the EU “are meet before the visit and their demands were met, ”Ankara’s chief of diplomacy said at a press conference with his Kuwaiti counterpart, Ahmad Nasser Al Mohammad Al Sabah. All ‘Ansa, Turkish government sources reiterated that “during the visit the standard protocol. The president of the European Commission was not treated differently. Nor did the EU delegation ask for a different provision. In this situation, we would have expected the two guests agreed with each other“.
The protocol incident that happened to von der Leyen in Turkey was the subject of much criticism and was renamed on social media “Suffocate“. The president of the European Commission, in fact, left without an armchair, was forced to sit on the sofa. The scene is shot in a video went viral in which a groan of disappointment is heard from von der Leyen.
Last night, the President of the European Council Michel said he was “sorry he seemed indifferent” about what happened to von der Leyen in Turkey, and added that “at that moment, while perceiving the deplorable nature of the situation, we chose not to make it worse. with a public incident, and to give priority to the substance of the political discussion we were about to begin at this beginning of the meeting ”.
Read also: 1. Erdogan receives the EU leaders, but does not reserve the chair of honor for Ursula von der Leyen / 2. “Sorry to have seemed indifferent”: the post of the President of the European Council Michel after the rude to von der Leyen in Ankara
