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Turkey forbids the Bundeswehr military mission to turn off Incirlik
The Turkish government has forbidden Bundestag delegates to visit German soldiers at the Incirlik base. The Federal Foreign Office calls the decision "absolutely unacceptable", the Bundeswehr plans the withdrawal.
Monday, May 15 , 2017 11:39 AM
The trip was planned for this week, on Tuesday it should start: several Bundestag delegates wanted to visit the Incirlik stationed German army soldiers.
Turkey , however, had not given formal approval for the planned visit despite several requests from the Federal Foreign Office (AA).
In Incirlik , the Bundeswehr currently has about 260 soldiers, several "tornado" reconnaissance jets and tankers.
From there, the Luftwaffe flies its support missions in the struggle of the international coalition against the terrorism "Islamic State" (IS).
The fighters, however, do not fly with air strikes, but only provide reconnaissance images for the coalition and fuel the jets of other nations in the air.
Chancellor Angela Merkel criticized the new visit ban.
"This is awful, and we've made it clear on the various channels," she said.
The Bundeswehr will continue to examine whether there are alternatives to the relocation of German soldiers to other countries such as Jordan.
"The Bundeswehr is a parliamentary arm, so it is absolutely necessary that there are visits for our deputies to their soldiers," emphasized Merkel.
The Foreign Office has repeatedly pushed for permission from Turkey over the past few days, and a so-called "diplomatic clearance" is also necessary for the flight over Turkey and a landing in Incirlik.
Well, one day before the trip, Turkey was informed that the visit of deputies was not possible until further notice, but a concrete reason was not mentioned.
After the decision of Turkey, the Federal Government is considering, for the first time, the withdrawal of soldiers and aircraft from Turkey.
In the next two weeks, we will examine whether we can move to another location.
Ankara's decision apparently responded to asylum for Turkish soldiers
The German Foreign Office, and even Minister Sigmar Gabriel ( SPD ), had been working for the approval in recent days. On the margins of a donor conference for Somalia , Gabriel also spoke with the Turkish Prime Minister, Binali Yildirim . However, according to the German Government, it had clarified that such an authorization would not be possible in the foreseeable future.
Concrete reason for the new dispute is that Germany has granted asylum to several Turkish army officers in the last few weeks. The soldiers, most of whom were stationed in Germany, had indicated that they were threatened with a non-rightwing persecution in Turkey, as they see them as followers of the preacher Fethullah Gülen , who accused President Erdogan as the mastermind of the failed military coup.
The federal government has sharply criticized the renewed denial of a deputy's journey to German soldiers at the Air Force base Incirlik by Turkey. It was "absolutely unacceptable" that the visit announced weeks ago was now not possible.
Sharp criticism by Green politician Brugger and the CDU politician Brand
"It is the next giant armament that the deputy was forbidden to visit Incirlik," said Agnieszka Brugger, spokeswoman for security policy and disarmament of the Green Bundestag fraction. "It is cynical and completely unacceptable by the Turkish government to link this issue with the asylum procedures of Turkish soldiers."
The chairman of the Human Rights Committee of the Bundestag, CDU politician Michael Brand, should also have taken part in the delegation trip to Incirlik. In an interview with the SPIEGEL, he called on the federal government to examine alternatives to the base "quickly and concretely". "Erdogan's course is becoming more and more a real safety risk, even outside Turkey," says Brand. Who in the joint fight against the IS "so underground with an important partner like Germany bypasses, must finally be put a stop sign". The time had now come to "make decisions and act".
The CDU politician called the asylum procedures in Germany for Turkish soldiers another, not to be heard alarm signal. "If you do not act now, you have to accept the accusation that Erdogan is going to invite you to further escalation," said Brand.
The debate about new locations for the Bundeswehr outside Turkey had already flared up in 2016.
The Luftwaffe had at least two alternative locations for the "tornados" and the soldiers inspected, one is in Jordan , but also Cyprus is a substitute base.
The dispute between Turkey and Germany is not new
After a long dispute over the travels of deputies to the Bundeswehr soldiers in Incirlik in 2016, the federal government had laboriously achieved a kind of compromise with Turkey, so that at least the delegations of the Bundestag, but no individual deputies, were allowed to travel to Incirlik.
In 2016, Turkey had denied a visit to the German soldiers for months , and the resolution of the Bundestag , which recognized the crimes committed during the Ottoman Empire as a genocide in the Armenians, was the reason for the upheaval.
The federal government had then made it clear that the resolution had been passed by the Bundestag and not by the government, and pointed out that such a resolution was not legally binding.
