Erdoğan gave Hendrik Wüst the optics of a chancellor-in-waiting

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan held a 50-minute meeting in Ankara with North Rhine-Westphalia premier Hendrik Wüst, an unusually senior audience for the leader of a German state. The encounter covered economic ties, current politics and closer defence-industrial co-operation. Wüst said Erdoğan followed Germany’s recent election results in detail and asked for his assessment.

The formal reason for Wüst’s three-day visit is substantial. It marks 65 years since the recruitment agreement that brought hundreds of thousands of Turkish workers to West Germany. Roughly one million people of Turkish origin live in North Rhine-Westphalia, and annual trade with Turkey is estimated at €10bn–€12bn. Wüst travelled with business leaders and more than 30 journalists.

Yet protocol made the meeting a political signal. National leaders do not routinely receive regional premiers, and Wüst is increasingly discussed as the most plausible CDU successor to Chancellor Friedrich Merz after severe election defeats. The trip gave him a foreign-policy stage, much as an earlier visit to Poland helped present him as a national figure. Erdoğan’s interest suggests that foreign governments are beginning to hedge against instability in Berlin.

Wüst has publicly said he wants to remain premier and joined other CDU state leaders in rejecting an immediate personnel debate. Replacing a chancellor mid-term would also require party and coalition manoeuvring that has not begun. The meeting is therefore evidence of positioning and perception, not a succession decision.

The substantive agenda points to why the optics matter. Wüst supports reforming the EU–Turkey customs union and wants investment for an industrial state under pressure; Turkey wants access to German markets and defence technology. He also raised rule-of-law and press-freedom concerns. If Wüst eventually becomes a federal leader, Ankara has now established a personal channel early—and publicly.