This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Reports that a German-backed international school in Istanbul had scrapped Christmas festivities briefly caused outrage on Sunday and Monday, before the German foreign office said there had been a misunderstanding and that the school was allowed to teach Christmas traditions after all.

Set up in 1884, Istanbul Lisesi is a Turkish-German bilingual state school attended solely by Turkish students but partly backed by the German government. Thirty-five German teachers at the school are paid for by German taxpayers, but the headteacher is nominated directly by the education ministry in Ankara.

According to Spiegel Online, several teachers at the school said they had been told to no longer teach about German Christmas traditions in their classes, as well as being told to remove advent calendars from the classrooms.

“We don’t understand the surprising decision by the management of the Istanbul Lisesi,” said the German foreign ministry in an initial statement. “It is too bad that the good tradition of pre-Christmas intercultural exchanges at the school with a long German-Turkish tradition has been suspended. We are of course taking this up with our Turkish partners.”

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The school denied the ban, which was first reported by the respected German news agency dpa and followed up by the media in Germany and abroad.

“The reports in German media about restrictions on Christmas festivities of German teachers do not reflect reality,” it said. “A concert was cancelled by the German teachers in question without explanation. There is no question of the school or its management placing an obstacle in its way or prohibiting it.”

Mustafa Yeneroğlu, an MP with the ruling AKP, also denied the claims, saying “such false reports do nothing for Turkey-Germany relations”.

A spokesperson for the German foreign ministry said on Monday afternoon that there was no “ban” on teaching Christmas at the school after all and that “hopefully all misunderstandings have been resolved”. By then, many German politicians had reacted with fury to the initial reports.

Julia Klöckner, a deputy chair of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic party, said the incident was a sign of Turkey closing itself off from the outside world: “Those who want to restrain free thinking in this way are so ignorant, they must be capable of worse.”

Sevim Dağdelen, a politician with Germany’s Left party, told Tagesspiegel the government must “immediately summon the Turkish ambassador and send a note of protest to Ankara”.

The Greens’ education policy spokesman, Özcan Mutlu, said the reports were “simply shocking”.

Andreas Scheuer, the general secretary of the CSU – Merkel’s Bavarian allies – said the reports were “new proof that [President Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan’s Turkey is burning all bridges with Europe”.

Christmas is part of Germany, and that applies too for a German school abroad, Scheuer told the Funke regional media group.

Relations between Ankara and Berlin have been strained in the wake of the failed military coup in July, with Germany repeatedly expressing concern over the scope of a massive crackdown on Erdoğan’s opponents.

Developments in Turkey have a strong resonance in Germany, home to a 3-million-strong ethnic Turkish population, the legacy of a massive “guest worker” programme in the 1960s and 70s.