Constantinople, Manolis Kostidis

“Germany softened on the Eurofighter issue” asserted on Saturday the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, returning from the G7 Summit in Italy.

Tayyip Erdogan said that the issue of buying Eurofighter fighters was discussed with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, whom he asked to lobby Berlin. The Eurofighter is a product of its collaboration Britain, Germany and Spain, and the consent of all three states is needed for their sale. Currently Germany seems cautious on the Eurofighter sale to Turkey.

“We have discussed this issue with Mr. Sanchez… As you know, Spain’s training aircraft are important. They have the opportunity or ability to provide us with these training aircraft. But at the point of contact with Germany, I told them to help us in this matter. He stated that he could have such a meeting for the Eurofighter. But above all, the Eurofighter is important to us at the moment. Germany has now softened on this issue. Our competent ministers have the necessary meetings with their interlocutors and will continue to do so,” he said.

“If they don’t give them to us, we have alternatives” however, the Turkish president insisted.

“Our basic approach is clear: we want to meet our needs primarily from our NATO allies. However, if a negative result occurs at the end of the process, we are not without alternatives. Our (new generation Turkish fighter jet) KAAN now has “wings”. In the future, after the start of mass production and the completion of the stock import process, we will no longer have any problems in this regard.”

Once, Tayyip Erdogan added, we experienced a similar process with unmanned aerial vehicles. We could not get these from our allies then. What happened next is we built our drones to the highest quality. Now many countries are knocking on Turkey’s door to get them.

“The elections for the European Parliament justified our concerns for racist and fascist structures. Unfortunately, more difficult times await Muslims and immigrants in Europe,” Erdogan said about the rise of the Far Right in Europe after the European elections.