Virtually all of Germany's political parties came together on Monday to condemn Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel for his impromptu meeting with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu in the central German town of Goslar at the weekend.

Cem Özdemir, departing leader of the Green party, didn't like the imagery: particularly a widely-shared picture of Gabriel, a member of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), pouring Cavusoglu a cup of tea. "If I'd have been representing Germany, I certainly wouldn't have served the Turkish foreign minister with a Turkish tea service and allowed myself to be photographed doing it," he told public broadcaster ARD on Monday morning.

This image would be understood in Turkey as a sign that "Germany was serving Turkey and the Turkish foreign minister," added Özdemir, who might himself have angled for Gabriel's job had the Green party's coalition negotiations with Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) gone differently last year.

Other sections of Germany's political spectrum made similar complaints. The Free Democratic Party (FDP) — Germany's free-market purists — also criticized the unofficial meeting as "inappropriate" while "Germans were being kept as prisoners without charge in Turkish jails," as FDP parliamentary leader Alexander Graf Lambsdorff put it. German-Turkish journalist Deniz Yücel has been kept without charge in a Turkish prison for nearly a year.

"To re-start German-Turkish relations we need clarity," he told the WAZ newspaper. "That's only possible if the German hostages like Deniz Yücel are released immediately. Only after that can trade, defense cooperation and other issues go back on the agenda — and not before."

No changes in Turkey

Turkey is keen to buy German equipment to reinforce its tanks against mines laid by the "Islamic State" militia in northern Syria, and in Goslar on Saturday Gabriel appeared to suggest that "when it comes to this concrete case," Turkey's arguments "make sense to me."

This drew criticism from other German politicians, not least because it had been Gabriel who, in the thick of the SPD's election campaign last summer, had said that Germany needed to take a tougher course against Ankara. As many politicians pointed out this weekend, Turkey's political climate has hardly become more liberal since then. "There is nothing new substantially, no change and no solution to problems, because nothing has changed about the causes of the problem," as the CDU's Norbert Röttgen said.

In response, Gabriel was quick to qualify his statements on Sunday. He insisted that he had used the meeting with Cavusoglu to urge Yücel's release, and said that the government would not change its line on the building of a tank factory, which German weapons maker Rheinmetall was keen to be part of, despite much protest.

"This is not about the manufacture of tanks, we would never approve that, and Rheinmetall knows that," Gabriel said. "But there is a product with which we can protect such tanks against mines. I don't see a real argument why we should refuse that."

Germany did reduce its arms sales to Turkey last year — approving €25 million ($30 million) worth of armaments exports between January and August — about half as much as the same period the year before.

A macabre deal

Barbara Happe, spokeswoman for Urgewald, a group that campaigns to end arms exports, said she was glad that Gabriel had made the clarification.

"But for us it's still not understandable why he's saying now that there can be a normalization of relations with Turkey, even though there have been no fundamental changes in Turkey," she told DW. "Of course it's really important that he's pushing hard for the release of the German prisoners, but these swap trades are a little macabre in that context. German prisoners are set free and then we can start exporting arms again — that's problematic because there are still no minimum standards of rule of law in Turkey."

Selling parts to protect tanks against mines to Turkey is particularly problematic, she added, because of the ongoing conflict with the Kurds both inside Turkey and across the border in northern Syria. 

For his part, Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger said last October that supplying the Turkish factory "would be difficult," as long as relations between Berlin and Ankara remained strained — but that was a long way from saying the company was giving up on the project, as Happe pointed out. "That means the plans are on ice," she said. "They're just being postponed — the company just wants to see how the mood changes, maybe what comes out of the government coalition negotiations."