The Left party sharply criticized Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) ahead of Syrian interim president Ahmed al‑Sharaa’s visit to Berlin.
“Merz’s meeting with al‑Sharaa is not a diplomatic step but a moral bankruptcy” Cansu Özdemir, the Left faction’s foreign‑affairs spokesperson in the Bundestag, said on Sunday. She accused the federal government of backing a regime built on the remnants of al‑Qaida‑linked networks, whose ideology of oppression, violence and Islamist fanaticism still endures.
“By meeting with al‑Sharaa, Merz normalizes Islamists who massacre unwilling ethnic and religious groups such as Christians, Alawites, Druze and Kurds” Özdemir added.
She also pointed out that after the government allowed a man who now de‑facto runs the Taliban’s embassy in Germany to enter, it is once again extending a friendly hand to jihadist structures. According to Özdemir, all of this serves only to enable mass deportations to Syria.