A German delegation this month was to travel to the Incirlik base in southern Turkey, used to launch coalition raids against Islamic State (ISIS) jihadists in Syria, but Turkey has blocked the trip.
Germany in December agreed to send Tornado surveillance jets and tanker aircraft to Incirlik to aid the multinational coalition fighting ISIS and currently has about 240 soldiers stationed there.
Media reports said the ban was in retaliation for Germany’s Bundestag lower house passing a resolution last month calling the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman forces during World War I a “genocide”. But Turkish officials did not confirm this publicly.
“To us, it’s a military issue,” Turkish deputy prime minister Numan Kurtulmus said on Monday, referring to any visit to Incirlik. “On the German side, the issue of Incirlik or sending soldiers is under the authority of the German parliament.”
He said because of differences in the two nations’ laws, “the visit of the German delegation is not yet certain. Talks are continuing.”
Chancellor Angela Merkel held fruitless negotiations with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the planned visit at a Nato summit in Warsaw at the weekend but her spokesman said Berlin would keep up the pressure.
“The goal is crystal clear: it must be possible for our deputies to visit our soldiers,” the spokesman, Steffen Seibert, told reporters in Berlin. “Of course it is necessary for our Bundestag deputies to be able to see our military in Turkey at Incirlik — it is a military under the control of the parliament.”
Merkel told ARD public television late Sunday that she would press on in talks with Ankara. “It is not the first time in politics that the first conversation did not suffice,” she said.