Winter will not be easy for Europe: Erdoğan

Europe will struggle this winter as Russia has choked off the supplies of natural gas that the continent depended on for years, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said.

"This winter will not be easy for Europe. It will be a very troubled winter. It will be a very heavy winter financially," Erdoğan told journalists on his presidential plane on his way back from Croatia on Sept. 8.

He was responding to the question if Europe could change its stance on the Russia-Ukraine war because of the crisis it will experience this winter.

"It seems difficult for me to make such a prediction without getting through this winter," Erdoğan said.

European countries, particularly Germany and France were proud to focus on renewable energy before the Ukrainian crisis and were confident with their nuclear power plants, the president recalled.

"They said that they had no problems with natural gas. I had meetings with [former German Chancellor Angela] Merkel and [French President Emmanuel] Macron at that time. In those meetings, they said that they would shut down coal, that is, thermal power plants, and switch to renewable energy, and even decided to close nuclear power plants," Erdoğan stated.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told him that he would not step back from Merkel's decision on shutting down their nuclear power plants, Erdoğan said.

"I asked 'Have you thought about it well?' 'Yes, because renewable energy is now a joint decision of the European Union,' he replied," Erdoğan said referring his conversation with Scholz.

"I saw that Macron is in the same situation. And what happened? Not a month passed, Germany immediately decided to open the Ruhr basin, which is an important thermal power plant basin where Germany is very strong in...