Germany Halts All Arms Shipment to Turkey
TEHRAN (FNA)- According to a report, Germany has frozen all arms shipment to Turkey after Ankara arrested several human rights activists, including a German national.
The Bild newspaper reported on Friday that Germany was “freezing all planned and ongoing arms deliveries to Turkey.”
In the months after the July 2016 abortive coup in Turkey against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Germany had already blocked 11 separate arms shipments to Turkey, including handguns, ammunition, and weapons components.
The latest move came after a Turkish court on Tuesday issued arrest warrants for six human rights activists for allegedly aiding a “terror” group, among them German citizen Peter Steudtner.
The arrests further strained the already tarnished relations between the two NATO allies.
Relations between Turkey and Germany, which is home to three million ethnic Turks, have been badly strained over what Europeans describe as Turkey’s human rights violations.
Turkey and Germany have been locked in a number of diplomatic disputes, including Turkey’s way of handling the aftermaths of a failed coup in July 2016, which has sparked massive criticism in Germany.
Ankara’s refusal to grant access to German lawmakers came after Berlin blocked visits and speeches by senior Turkish officials to members of Turkish diaspora in Germany ahead of an April referendum in Turkey.
Turkey is also critical of Germany over the country’s alleged support for suspected coup plotters and outlawed Kurdish militants.
Germany also begun the process of withdrawing its troops from the Incirlik Air Base in July 10, from where German troops have been carrying out reconnaissance missions as part of the US-led coalition’s campaign in Syria and Iraq.
The German Defense Ministry said earlier that the process of transferring military aircraft and personnel from the Turkish airbase to a new location in Jordan will result in the suspension German participation within the US-led coalition for at least two or three months.
Germany’s Defense Ministry Spokesman confirmed that German troops, an air refueling tanker, equipment and aircraft parts have left Incirlik for Jordan’s Al-Asrak base.
Tornado reconnaissance jets stationed at Incirlik will be sent back to Germany as the Jordanian base is not yet fully ready to accommodate the aircraft. The Tornado’s are due in Jordan by October.
Jordan’s Al-Asrak base is also much smaller than Turkey’s Incirlik and must first be modified to meet the needs of the German air grouping.
Berlin must also still sign several technical agreements with Amman regulating the stationing of German aircraft at the base.
The decision to relocate German troops from the Turkish base came as relations between the two countries took a new hit mid-May, when Ankara, for the second time, blocked a scheduled visit of German MPs with troops stationed at the base.
The German MP ban was motivated by Berlin’s decision to grant asylum to a number of Turkish nationals accused by Ankara of participating in the failed July 2016 coup attempt in Turkey. Those in question reportedly hold diplomatic passports and were stationed in NATO facilities in Germany at the time of the attempted coup.
Ankara ordered a similar Incirlik German MP ban in 2016, following the Bundestag’s (German parliament) decision to brand the Ottoman Empire’s massacre of Armenians in the early 20th century as genocide.