ISTANBUL: Turkey and the EU blamed each other on Thursday for seating arrangements that left European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen without a chair during a meeting with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The Turkish leader came under a torrent of criticism after images went viral of his Tuesday meeting with von der Leyen and European Council president Charles Michel in Ankara.
The room where the three leaders were hosted had only two chairs arranged next to the corresponding EU and Turkish flags.
Erdogan and Michel quickly seated themselves while von der Leyen — whose diplomatic rank is the same as that of the two men — was left standing.
“Ehm,” she said, spreading her arms in wonder and looking directly at Michel and Erdogan.
Official images later showed her seated on a sofa opposite Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu.
“The seating arrangements were made in line with the EU suggestion. Period,” he said in the first public statement by a Turkish official on the episode.
“We would not be revealing this fact had accusations not been made against Turkey,” Cavusoglu told reporters.
But Michel’s European Council said its protocol team had been denied advance access to the meeting room where the three leaders first sat down for talks. “If the room for the tete-a-tete had been visited, we would have suggested to our hosts that, as a courtesy, they replace the sofa with two armchairs for the President of the Commission,” the protocol team said in a letter.
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