Angela Merkel on Sunday unexpectedly promised to try to end Turkey’s EU accession talks in a live televised German election debate, amid escalating tensions between Berlin and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The German chancellor was seemingly bounced into making this unusually bold pledge by Martin Schulz, her social democrat challenger, who was the first to say he would break off the talks if he won the parliamentary poll on September 24.
The exchanges came with 12 German citizens now under arrest in Turkey in a crackdown by Mr Erdogan on regime critics and journalists that is widely seen in the EU as politically motivated and anti-democratic.
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