Turkish President Gül speaks with local accent in Stuttgart

On the last day of his four-day official visit, Gül left Berlin for Stuttgart, the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg. Upon being welcomed by Winfried Kretschmann, the governor of Baden-Württemberg, at the governorate, Gül delivered a brief speech to a welcoming audience.

Recalling that the people of Baden-Württemberg attach great importance to hard work, using local German accent, Gül said: “Schaffe, schaffe, Häusle baue [Work, work and build a house].” The audience applauded when Gül said this: the saying is widely repeated by the people of Baden-Württemberg as the region’s motto.

Kretschmann, meanwhile, offered condolences to Gül over the recent terrorist attacks in Turkey, and voiced support for Turkey’s European Union membership process. Later in the day, Gül was scheduled to visit the Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research before returning to Turkey.

While in Berlin earlier this week, Gül had separate talks with German President Christian Wulff and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The German press has given broad coverage to Gül’s official visit. The Berliner Morgenpost published a photograph of Gül wearing special eyeglasses during a visit to the German Environmental Foundation (DBU) in the city of Osnabruck. “Formal visit with protective glasses” the daily captioned the news report. Die Welt wrote that the Turkish people welcomed Gül in Osnabruck with great enthusiasm, waving Turkish and German flags, while Frankfurter Rundschau described the Turkish president as a “self-confident statesman” in an article titled “Foreign Ally of Europe.” Hamburger Abendblatt wrote that Gül and Merkel agreed foreign migrant workers in Germany should learn the German language at an early age, in order to integrate into German society.