Photo: Oliver Berg/DPATurkey on Saturday lashed out at "arrogant" German reaction to comments by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan urging ethnic Turks in Germany to vote against both parties in Chancellor Angela Merkel's ruling coalition. Gabriel condemned Erdogan's comments as an "unprecedented act of interference" while Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert said on Twitter: "We expect foreign governments to not interfere in our internal affairs." The SPD's chancellor candidate Martin Schulz went even further, saying Erdogan had "lost all sense of proportion". But Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag, who is also the official government spokesman, strongly defended Erdogan's comments saying they were only aimed at Turkish-origin voters in Germany. Analysts say that some 1.2 million people of Turkish origin will have the right to vote in the September polls as German citizens.

Source: The Local August 19, 2017 13:18 UTC