If what German President Joachim Gauck said in his joint press briefing with Turkish President Abdullah Gul and later in his speech at Ankara’s Middle East Technical University (METU) — a school with the reputation of a traditional leftist stronghold — can be classified as “strong criticism,” then the reaction of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has to be classified as hate speech.

This two-day Turkish-German diatribe should not be regarded as merely strong-worded polemics between the two allied statesmen. It is rather a reflection of the troubled course of relations of Turkey under Erdogan with the Western world, and above all with the European Union.

Gauck had raised four questions for his Turkish counterpart during their joint press conference:

• Did Turkey have to ban Twitter and YouTube?
• Why was the supreme justice so critical? This was a reference to the recent harsh criticism by Turkish Constitutional Court’s Supreme Justice Hasim Kilic, directed at Erdogan’s government.
• Will the current government’s intervention with the judiciary, when it has such mammoth power after an extraordinary electoral victory, truly strengthen democracy?
• Why is the government taking action against the judiciary, and why is it flexing its muscles against the media?

After he asked these questions at the press conference, Gauck touched on some very sensitive issues for Erdogan in his METU speech. In the opening of his speech to METU students, he said, “I have heard that your campus is a place of open and liberal thoughts.” The German president asked his audience, "Please don’t misunderstand me. What I have been saying is not interference in domestic affairs. It is a desire to share equally. What I have said are the concerns of a citizen who has become a defender of democracy after years of experience gained under a totalitarian state.”