Wrapping up his five-day trip to Turkey, German President Christian Wulff was full of praise for the hosts: In crucial political questions there was broad agreement, he said.<\/p>\n
The German president concluded his trip to Turkey with a call for more exchanges in education, ideas and culture. Christian Wulff and his Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gul together laid the foundation stone for a new German-Turkish university in Istanbul.<\/p>\n
The project\u00a0will combine the strength of both of the two countries systems of higher education, President Wulff said.\u00a0Around 5,000 students are to begin studies at the university\u00a0next year. German universities\u00a0are to provide professors and teachers and the\u00a0courses are to be\u00a0taught mainly in German.<\/p>\n
Wulff visited the Blue Mosque in Istanbul<\/strong><\/p>\n At the close of his visit, Wulff described the five days as “extremely positive.”<\/p>\n “I have felt at every stage the trust felt towards Germany,” he said on Friday. He said\u00a0key\u00a0issues had been discussed openly,\u00a0and there\u00a0had been agreement on all the essential political questions. Turkey, he said,\u00a0was on\u00a0its way\u00a0to becoming a successful economy.<\/p>\n Religion and integration topping the agenda<\/strong><\/p>\n Wulff’s visit was the first by a German president to Turkey in more than a decade, and came at a time of heightened tension in Germany itself over the place of its ethnic minorities, of which Turks form the largest group.<\/p>\n Wulff also became the first German head of state to address the Turkish parliament. In his speech on Tuesday, the president explicitly addressed the problem of the integration of Turkish immigrants in German.<\/p>\n “Our fellow citizens of Turkish origin are welcome in our country, and belong to our country,” he said. “As their president, I urge every immigrant to actively integrate in German society.”<\/p>\n Wulff was the first German president to adress the Turkish parliament<\/p>\n Germany has\u00a0around\u00a0four\u00a0million Muslims among its population of 82 million, with 2.5 million Turks forming the largest ethnic minority.<\/p>\n Wulff\u00a0also pushed for more freedom of religion for Christians within Turkey, taking part in a church service in the southern city of Tartus, said to be\u00a0the birthplace of Paul the Apostle.<\/p>\n On Friday morning, the German president met with Bartholomew I, the Istanbul-based Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople. He later\u00a0visited the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia, formerly a Christian church.<\/p>\n Author: Andreas Illmer (apn, dpa)<\/p>\n Editor: Chuck Penfold<\/p>\n via President Wulff describes Turkey trip as extremely successful | Germany | Deutsche Welle | 22.10.2010<\/span>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Wrapping up his five-day trip to Turkey, German President Christian Wulff was full of praise for the hosts: In crucial political questions there was broad agreement, he said. The German president concluded his trip to Turkey with a call for more exchanges in education, ideas and culture. Christian Wulff and his Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gul […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":634077,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[3980],"class_list":["post-24153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-germany","tag-wulff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/634077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}