Originally published 2021-04-10.
On 6 April 2021, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen arrived for talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Ankara and found only two chairs at the front of the room. Erdoğan took one, European Council President Charles Michel took the other, and von der Leyen was left standing before being seated on a sofa to the side. The moment, caught on video and quickly nicknamed "sofagate", became a symbol of how women in power are treated in diplomacy.
The seating dispute was not only about furniture. It exposed a long-running question about how the EU's two presidents rank against each other, and it landed just weeks after Turkey withdrew from a major treaty on violence against women. Here is what happened, who said what, and why it still comes up in debates about protocol and gender.
What happened in the room
The two EU leaders had travelled to Turkey to discuss the future of EU–Turkey relations, which had been strained by migration disputes and by tensions in the eastern Mediterranean with Greece and Cyprus. Human rights and the rule of law, including women's rights, were also on the agenda.
When the three leaders entered the reception room, there were two chairs in front of the EU and Turkish flags, plus two sofas facing each other. Michel sat in the chair beside Erdoğan. Von der Leyen paused, made an audible sound of surprise, and spread her arms, a reaction filmed by cameras in the room. She then sat on a long sofa opposite Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, who ranks below her in protocol terms.
The video spread within hours. Commentator Bruno Maçães was one of many who posted it with a remark of disbelief:
Yah not supposed to be like this
— Bruno Maçães (@MacaesBruno) April 6, 2021
pic.twitter.com/0ru16B9sq8
The talks themselves went ahead, and von der Leyen took full part in them.
Why only two chairs? The protocol question
The EU has two presidents with overlapping roles. The President of the European Council chairs summits of EU heads of state and government. The President of the European Commission leads the EU's executive. Inside the EU, the Commission's position is that both leaders have the same protocol rank when they travel together.
International protocol is less clear. Under a strict reading, the Council president, who represents the member states' leaders, comes first. Turkey's foreign minister said the arrangement followed the European side's own requests and called accusations against Turkey unfair. The EU's head of protocol disputed that account, saying his team had not been given access to the room during the preparatory visit.
Observers also noted that at an earlier meeting between Erdoğan and the previous EU presidents, all three men had sat on matching chairs. That made the 2021 arrangement look less like an unavoidable protocol rule and more like a choice.
The responses: Brussels, Michel and Ankara
The Commission
Commission spokesperson Eric Mamer said the next day that von der Leyen had clearly been surprised, as the video showed. He stressed that she held the same protocol rank as Michel, that she expected her institution to be treated accordingly, and that she had asked her team to make sure such an incident did not happen again. He also said she had chosen to focus on the substance of the meeting rather than walk out.
Charles Michel
Michel faced the sharpest criticism, because he could have offered his seat or chosen the sofa himself. In a public statement he expressed regret for giving the impression that he was indifferent to the awkward situation. He argued that a public protest in the room could have triggered a wider diplomatic incident and damaged the purpose of the visit. He later said he had slept badly after the meeting and would act differently if he could do it again.
Turkey
Ankara rejected blame throughout, repeating that it had followed protocol agreed with the EU side and that the seating reflected international practice.
The Istanbul Convention backdrop
The timing made the image especially pointed. On 20 March 2021, about two weeks before the visit, Erdoğan had announced by presidential decree that Turkey would withdraw from the Istanbul Convention, the Council of Europe's treaty on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence.
The convention was opened for signature in Istanbul in May 2011, and Turkey had been the first country to ratify it, in March 2012. Its withdrawal took effect on 1 July 2021, making Turkey the only state ever to leave the treaty. The EU itself later joined the convention, with the accession entering into force for the EU in October 2023.
Spanish MEP Iratxe García Pérez, leader of the Socialists and Democrats group in the European Parliament, linked the two events directly, calling the Ankara episode a shameful act of "micromachismo" by both Michel and Erdoğan. Women's rights groups launched a petition calling for Michel to resign, and Italian MEP Massimiliano Smeriglio gathered signatures for the same demand.
Von der Leyen speaks out
Von der Leyen addressed the European Parliament on 26 April 2021. She said she had not seen any shortage of chairs at earlier meetings of this kind, and concluded that she had been treated differently because she was a woman. Her most quoted line was: "I felt hurt, and I felt alone, as a woman, and as a European."
She avoided directly blaming either Erdoğan or Michel. Instead she framed the incident as part of a broader issue, saying it went to the core of what the EU stands for, and argued that respect for women's rights should be a condition for progress in dialogue with Turkey.
Why sofagate still matters
The incident has become a reference point in discussions of diplomatic protocol, the EU's sometimes confusing leadership structure and everyday sexism in politics. It also strained relations between the Commission and the Council, whose presidents were already seen as rivals for the role of speaking for Europe abroad.
Several lessons were widely drawn. Advance teams need clear, written agreements on seating before high-level visits. Leaders in the room can defuse an awkward situation by giving up a seat. And images travel faster than explanations: whatever the protocol rules said, millions of people saw a woman leader left without a chair while two men sat down.
For readers following EU–Turkey relations, sofagate is best understood as one visible moment within much larger issues: migration cooperation, trade, the eastern Mediterranean and Turkey's human rights record.
Sources: Wikipedia: Sofagate; Al Jazeera, 27 April 2021: EU chief von der Leyen slams sofagate incident; Wikipedia: Istanbul Convention. Original reporting: The Guardian, 7 April 2021.
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