HURRIYET- Columnist Hadi Uluengin writes on German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s victory in Sunday’s elections. A summary of his column is as follows:
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Red-Green coalition managed to hold onto power with a razor-thin majority in Sunday’s elections. Schroeder secured a second four-year term for his coalition with the small Greens party. In fact, I’m very pleased with his victory.
Why? Because a Schroeder government will be much better for Turkish-German relations. If Schroeder’s right-wing election challenger, Barvaria’s Christian Social Union (CSU) leader Edmund Stoiber, had come to power, the results would have been very different for Turkish-EU relations. After all, we all know that Stoiber is a conservative politician opposing Turkey’s EU membership bid, since he advocates a ‘Christian Europe.’ That would have been a tremendous disappointment for Turkey. However, we would greatly mistaken to think that Schroeder’s victory means that the EU will definitely set a date at December’s Copenhagen summit for the beginning of Turkey’s membership negotiations. Apart from the EU Commission’s study of the implementation of reforms in our country, the Red-Green coalition will also have to act very cautiously on this issue since German political circles still considers it a sensitive matter domestically. Anyway, since we all know that Schroeder largely lacks Stoiber’s prejudicial bent, Turkey should be happy that he’s been re-elected.
An extremely populist strategy lay behind Schroeder’s victory. For instance, he was very successful in taking advantage of certain events such as Germany’s recent flood disaster and the Iraq issue. Let’s not forget his poise and generosity during the flood or his stance on Iraq, which drew the wrath of the Bush administration. Throughout the elections campaign, Schroeder voiced emphatic opposition to any war with Iraq. He is also thought to have gained the edge over his rival Stoiber in a live television debate, where the two leaders clashed on a number of issues, including unemployment and the question of a military strike against Iraq. Though the chancellor will face even tougher opposition as he tries to revive Germany’s economy, which suffered greatly during his term due to chronic unemployment and stifled economic growth, he managed to keep a majority of nine seats in Parliament (from a previous 21), which I believe should be considered a personal success for him. In addition, we shouldn’t forget that Greens leader Joschka Fischer played a significant role in this victory through his wise decisions as German foreign minister as well as his non-populist elections campaign.
SOURCE: OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER, DIRECTORATE GENERAL OF PRESS AND INFORMATION