Germany to withdraw military aircraft from Turkey
By
Johannes Stern
8 June 2017
The German cabinet has decided to transfer some 260 German soldiers, along with Tornado reconnaissance aircraft and a tanker aircraft, to Jordan from the Turkish air base at Incirlik.
“In view of the fact that Turkey is currently unable to allow German parliamentarians visits to Incirlik, the cabinet has today agreed that we will move the Bundeswehr [Armed Forces] from Incirlik to Jordan,” Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen (CDU, Christian Democratic Union) said following the cabinet meeting on Wednesday.
A parliamentary vote on the continuation of the operation against the Islamic State (IS), in which the Bundeswehr has been involved since the end of 2015, and which is also directed against the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad, was not necessary, she said. “The unanimous opinion was that there is no need for a new mandate, because the [existing] mandate itself does not specify Incirlik as a base, but the area of deployment—and that concerns Syria and Iraq and the neighbouring states.” Von der Leyen said the German military deployment in Syria and Iraq would continue from Jordan.
The withdrawl of German troops from Turkey is a foreign policy watershed. It is the first time that a NATO member has withdrawn its forces from a support base in another member state due to political conflicts.
The US-led military alliance was critical about the planned withdrawal of the Bundeswehr. Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg was “in regular contact with the Turkish and German governments regarding this issue,” and it was “regrettable that this matter could not be resolved otherwise,” a NATO spokesman told German daily Die Welt .
The official reason for the German withdrawal is a…