Turkey maintains ban on German visits to Incirlik base

ANKARA: Turkey will maintain a ban on visits by German politicians to a key airbase used for raids against Daesh in Syria, the foreign minister said Monday.

The Incirlik base in southern Turkey has been at the center of a dispute between the NATO allies since Ankara blocked a visit last month by German parliamentarians.

“Right now, it is possible to visit the NATO base in Konya (in central Turkey), not Incirlik,” Mevlut Cavusoglu said at a news conference with his German counterpart Sigmar Gabriel in Ankara.

Germany has 250 military personnel stationed at Incirlik flying Tornado surveillance missions over Syria and refueling flights for partner nations battling Daesh militants.

At the height of the row, Germany warned it could move the personnel to another location in the region, most likely Jordan.

Gabriel said he regretted the Turkish decision, adding that Ankara must understand “for domestic political reasons we will then need to transfer our soldiers.”

But he added there was not yet any decision or a concrete plan for the relocation of the German troops from Incirlik.

Turkey justified preventing the German parliamentary group from visiting the base by accusing Berlin of having offered political asylum to Turkish nationals who took part in the July 2016 attempted coup.

Cavusoglu said Monday that Turkey had no problem with Germany, which is a major trade partner, adding: “If Germany takes one step forward toward us, we will always take two steps further.”

But he said that some facts could not be ignored, adding that more than 400 Turkish diplomatic or official passport holders had sought asylum in Germany.

“We would not like to see members of FETO take shelter in friendly country Germany,” he said, referring to a movement led by US-based Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen, blamed by Ankara for orchestrating the failed coup.

Cavusoglu hinted that visits to Incirlik could be possible in the future if joint steps were taken, without elaborating. “Conditions are not ripe right now to visit Incirlik,” he said.

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim canceled a planned meeting with Gabriel because of scheduling reasons, an official from the Turkish premier’s office said.

“The meeting could not take place time-wise,” the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

But Gabriel was due to meet with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Relations between Turkey and Germany have been tense since last July’s failed coup but deteriorated over a referendum campaign this year to expand Erdogan’s powers.

Ties were strained further after Turkish authorities imprisoned a German-Turkish journalist with Die Welt, Deniz Yucel, on terror charges.

Cavusoglu said that the accusations against Yucel were “not about journalism but terror,” and that the “independent judiciary” was leading the investigation in the Yucel case.

Amid worsening relations, Erdogan has repeatedly accused German Chancellor Angela Merkel of “hiding terrorists” in Germany and claimed that Berlin was not responding to 4,500 dossiers sent by Ankara on terror suspects.

Turkey is an important country for Berlin, in part because of the roughly 3 million ethnic Turks in Germany after a “guest worker” program in the 1960s and 1970s.