"I welcome the fact the Turkish government has now approved the plans for a visit by the defense committee of the German parliament" to the İncirlik base, said Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
"With this decision by the Turkish government, we have taken a step forward," he said after months of discord since the German parliament angered Turkey in June by declaring the World War I mass killings of Ottoman Armenians in 1915 a genocide.
"An army that answers to parliament must be able to be visited by their deputies," Steinmeier said.
Strained relations between Ankara and Berlin due to the Armenian bill got even worse after Turkey rejected a German parliamentary delegation’s visit in late June to the İncirlik Air Base, which hosts 250 German troops, six surveillance jets and a refueling tanker.
Berlin threatened the removal of its military presence at the base to another regional country, but the German troops and jets at İncirlik contribute to the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Iraq and Syria.
Turkey allows German diplomats’ visit to Incirlik airbase
08 September 2016
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Germany said on Sept. 8 that Turkey had approved a visit by German lawmakers to a Turkish NATO airbase after initially refusing access amid a row over the Armenian bill.
