After the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, CDU leader Friedrich Merz now sees Turkey as a more important negotiation partner. “Turkey is strengthened, it will now play a much larger role in the entire Near and Middle Eastern region. Therefore, a good advice to us and to the Europeans is that we must now work much more closely with Turkey to also politically pacify this region” he said to the RTL/ntv editorial team on Monday evening.

He will not initially agree with demands from his own party to no longer grant a protection status to newly arriving Syrian refugees from now on. “That is not a question that can be quickly answered now. There is a lot in flux, but we must have an influence on what is happening there.