Triple threat to Merkel’s G20 bump: Putin, Erdoğan, Trump

To make the summit a success, the German chancellor must find a way to stand up to the US president while avoiding a collision.

A front window of a house bears the portraits of U.S. President Donald Trump, Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russia's President Vladimir Putin and the inscription "Police everywhere, no justice anywhere" | Christof Stache/AFP via Getty Images

BERLIN — For Angela Merkel, meetings like the G20 summit in Hamburg are usually an opportunity to shine. This one comes with a strong dose of trouble.

The longtime German leader is known as the “summit chancellor” — Gipfelkanzlerin — for her ability to turn powwows with world leaders into bumps in the polls. Repeating the feat this week will require a tricky balancing act.

Officials from the chancellor’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) say they have identified “three critical variables” that could go badly wrong in Hamburg: Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and U.S. President Donald Trump.

Merkel’s challenge: standing up to this coterie of swellheaded strongmen while tamping down flare-ups, and — as host of the summit — herding 19 countries plus the European Union toward a presentable compromise for the summit’s final communiqué.

Failing on any of these counts risks leaving her looking weak in her last major appearance on the global stage before Germans head to the ballot box in September’s parliamentary election.

The Hamburg summit will mark the first time Trump and Putin encounter each other in person since Trump became U.S. president.

“We’re asking ourselves, ‘What if we have a summit that isn’t successful because Trump is blocking everything?’” said a high-ranking CDU official involved in Merkel’s campaign. “Then, the [Gipfelkanzlerin] bonus is gone, and everything will go down another road.”

Merkel looks on

Of the “three critical variables,” the easiest one to manage is likely to be Putin. Not long ago, the Russian president — who once famously exploited Merkel’s fear of dogs by bringing his large Labrador to a meeting — would have been a top cause of lost sleep among German officials.

Tensions between Russia and Germany have been high ever since the Kremlin annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in 2014. One year later, the European Union imposed sanctions against Moscow over its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine.

But this time around, the concern is less about the Russian president than about whom he will be meeting. The Hamburg summit will mark the first time Trump and Putin encounter each other in person since Trump became U.S. president.

An official bilateral scheduled for Friday has the potential for fireworks. Interest is high, following allegations of Russian interference in the American election. And neither man is likely to accept being upstaged by the other.

Merkel’s problem: This is the one event at the summit over which she has the least control. Merkel spoke to both men on the phone recently, and she will meet with Trump in person before he sees Putin. But on the day they meet, she will largely be constrained to the sidelines. “We can’t do much else than just wait to see what’s happening, and then react to it,” another CDU official said.

What will Erdoğan do?

Handling Erdoğan could be more challenging. Merkel’s relationship with the Turkish president has been on a downhill trajectory since last summer, when the German parliament enraged Ankara by passing a resolution calling the 1915 massacres of Armenians by Ottoman Turks a genocide.

Tensions flared further in March after Berlin blocked several rallies in Germany in support of a constitutional referendum intended to strengthen Erdoğan’s powers. Germany is home to roughly 3 million ethnic Turks, almost half of whom are eligible to vote in Turkey, and Erdoğan regards the community as part of his political constituency. He reacted angrily to the ban, accusing Berlin of “Nazi practices.” Turkey also blocked visits by German MPs to its Incirlik airbase, used by German troops in the fight against ISIS.

A formal request, submitted by Ankara in June, for permission for Erdoğan to address Turkish citizens on the sidelines of the Hamburg summit, was perceived by Berlin as yet another provocation. The application was quickly rejected, but officials are concerned the Turkish president could nonetheless hold a rally inside a Turkish consulate in Germany, where Berlin has no jurisdiction.

“I hear and read rumors of potential appearances in the consulates via a video stream or something like that,” Martin Schäfer, a spokesperson for the German foreign ministry, said Monday. He emphasized “that appearances of such sort would need to be put forward to the German government with appropriate advance notice.”

The Trump dilemma

It’s the U.S. president who’s most likely to give Merkel heartburn. “Merkel needs to succeed in not going on a collision course with Trump, while at the same time sticking to her principles,” said Dennis Snower, the president of the Institute for the World Economy in Kiel, Germany.

The chancellor plans to hold a one-on-one meeting with Trump on Thursday evening, before the summit officially starts, a German government spokesperson confirmed on Monday.

She is expected to focus the conversation on areas where Trump has signaled he believes multilateral cooperation is important, such as combating terrorism. But the differences between the two leaders are likely to loom large.

Government officials in Berlin say they believe Trump will use his first visit to Germany to complain about the country’s trade surplus and demand Berlin spend more on defense — repeating criticisms he made on the campaign trail, in a meeting with Merkel in Washington D.C. in March and most recently in late May, when he told participants at a NATO summit in Brussels that “the Germans are bad, very bad.”

Such a confrontation would be doubly delicate for Merkel. Trump is highly unpopular among Germans — unlike his predecessor Barack Obama, who is still greeted by cheering crowds when he visits. And standing up to the U.S. president has become an important theme of the election campaign.

Few things would be more toxic to Merkel’s reelection efforts than being perceived as backing down before Trump on the global stage.

Walking the line

For months, Merkel’s Social Democratic rival Martin Schulz has been trying to capitalize on Trump’s unpopularity in Germany. Last weekend, he dialed up the pressure, stressing in an interview that “the German chancellor needs to have the courage to enter a conflict with the American president.”

To make the summit a success, Merkel must find a way to manage the inevitable distractions at a gathering of 20 of the world’s largest egos.

In response to pressure from Schulz, Merkel has toughened up her rhetoric. Last week, reacting to renewed criticism of Germany’s trade surplus, she snapped back by pointing out the jobs German companies have created in the United States. Two days later, she suggested Washington’s positions on trade and the environment were out of touch with an increasingly globalized world.

So far, her strategy has been successful: Support for the chancellor has surged in the polls, where her conservatives are more than 15 percentage points ahead of Schulz’ Social Democrats.

In Hamburg, however, Merkel will have her hands tied. Instead of being on the campaign trail, she will be managing the theatrics of the summit — the culmination of which will be a joint communiqué representing the views of the assembled leaders. Failure to deliver something credible will put her leadership in a bad light. So much for the Gipfelkanzlerin.

To make the summit a success, Merkel must find a way to stand up to the U.S. president, while directing his attention, and that of the German electorate, toward areas of consensus — all the while managing the inevitable distractions at a gathering of 20 of the world’s largest egos.

It’s not likely to be an easy task.

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