(MENAFN- The Journal Of Turkish Weekly) >Turkey will permitGermanDefense Minister Ursula von der Leyen to visit the ncirlik Air Base, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yldrm said June 27 after a row erupted between the two countries when Turkey barred aGermanpolitical delegation from making a trip to the base.
“Turkey will allow theGermandefense minister” to make a visit to ncirlik, said Yldrm on June 27 upon a question at a press conference organized to announce a deal withIsraelfor the normalization of the countries’ strained ties.
“There is no problem,” Yldrm added.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuolu said on June 23 that a visit byGermanpoliticians to ncirlik, one of the centers from where the U.S-led anti-Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) campaign is being managed in southern Turkey, was “not appropriate.”
“It is not appropriate for non-military delegations and politicians to visit the ncirlik Air Base,” said Çavuolu, afterGermanmedia reported that Germany’s state secretary for defense, Ralf Brauksiepe, and other lawmakers had been barred by Turkey from making a visit to the base in Turkey’s south in July.
Von der Leyen told Germany’s Bild am Sonntag newspaper on June 26 that she would personally go to ncirlik.
Last December, Germany agreed to send Tornado surveillance jets and tanker aircraft to ncirlik to aid the multinational coalition fighting ISIL in Syria. It has about 250 soldiers stationed at ncirlik.
However, Berlin angeredNATOally Turkey when its parliament passed a resolution this month declaring the World War I-era killings of Armenians by Ottoman forces a “genocide.”
Çavuolu refrained from linking the government’s denial of the visit to the genocide resolution, althoughGermanmedia reported that Turkey had said it blocked the visit because of the Armenian vote.