Google does not accept sitemap with error "Main tag: url, tag: link"

Question

In my Google console, I am getting 1 error and can not understand the given error. All sitemap validators say it is correct but Google does not accept this sitemap.

I edit it for this error and delete this all:

          writer.WriteAttributeString("xmlns:xhtml", "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml");
        //writer.WriteAttributeString("xmlns:xsi", "https://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance");
        //writer.WriteAttributeString("xsi:schemaLocation", "http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9 http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9/sitemap.xsd");

But it does not change anything, the error continues. Here is my sitemap content:

<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<url>
<loc>http://xx.com.tr/tr</loc>
<priority>0.8</priority>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="tr" href="http://xx.com.tr/tr"/>
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="de" href="http://xx.com.tr/de"/>
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="http://xx.com.tr/en"/>
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="http://xx.com.tr/"/>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://xx.com.tr/de</loc>
<priority>0.8</priority>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="tr" href="http://xx.com.tr/tr"/>
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="de" href="http://xx.com.tr/de"/>
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="http://xx.com.tr/en"/>
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="http://xx.com.tr/"/>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://xx.com.tr/en</loc>
<priority>0.8</priority>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="tr" href="http://xx.com.tr/tr"/>
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="de" href="http://xx.com.tr/de"/>
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="http://xxxx.com.tr/en"/>
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="http://xx.com.tr/"/>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://xx.com.tr/</loc>
<priority>0.8</priority>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="tr" href="http://xx.com.tr/tr"/>
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="de" href="http://xx.com.tr/de"/>
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="http://xx.com.tr/en"/>
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="http://xx.com.tr/"/>
</url>
</urlset>

Error is:

Expected: http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml
Situated: http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9
Main tag: url
tag: link

Answer 1

<link> is not part of the Sitemap "protocol", see https://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html

So you need to remove all of them, which gives you this file that should be accepted by Google:

<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<url>
<loc>http://xx.com.tr/tr</loc>
<priority>0.8</priority>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://xx.com.tr/de</loc>
<priority>0.8</priority>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://xx.com.tr/en</loc>
<priority>0.8</priority>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://xx.com.tr/</loc>
<priority>0.8</priority>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
</url>
</urlset>

PS: in future cases, please use RFC2606 if you really need to obfuscate names which means basically to use example.com, example.net and .example as domain names and TLDs.