German minister says will visit Turkey base after snub

BERLIN: Germany's defence minister said Sunday that she would personally visit an air base in Turkey after Ankara barred a German political delegation from making the trip next month.
Ursula von der Leyen told Bild am Sonntag newspaper that she would go to the Incirlik air base in southern Turkey used to launch coalition air raids against Islamic State (IS) jihadists in Syria.
She blasted a decision announced earlier this month by Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu that Germany's state secretary for defence Ralf Brauksiepe and other lawmakers would not be welcome at Incirlik for a scheduled July visit because it would be "inappropriate".
"I have never experienced anything like this. It goes without saying that the leadership of the defence ministry should be able to visit German soldiers in the field," she said.
"That is why I will be travelling to Incirlik in the coming days to discuss the situation on the ground with our soldiers."
A German defence ministry spokesman declined to provide further details on von der Leyen's travel plans.
The minister said she would also use her visit "to explain to Turkey what it means to have a military under parliamentary control".
"These are the same members of parliament who raised their hands for the Patriot mission of the German military to protect Turkey from Syrian missiles," she said, referring to a three-year deployment of Nato anti-missile systems in southern Turkey that ended last year.
Germany last December agreed to send Tornado surveillance jets and tanker aircraft to Incirlik to aid the multinational coalition fighting the IS group in Syria.
However Berlin angered Nato ally Turkey when its parliament passed a resolution this month calling the World War I killings of Armenians by Ottoman forces a "genocide."
Cavusoglu refrained from linking the government's denial of the visit with the genocide resolution, although German media reported that Turkey had said it blocked the visit because of the Armenia vote. — AFP