On Monday, the German Foreign Ministry said the visit by German lawmakers to the country's troops stationed at Incirlik was stalled by the Turkish side a day before it was due to take place.
“Turkey canceled the visit of the German lawmakers to the Incirlik base because this delegation may embrace people openly supporting the PKK. That is a situation absolutely unacceptable for Turkey. We know that there is a defense commission in the [German] parliament. It includes members of the Left Party [Die Linke] that openly support the Kurdistan Workers’ Party," Yeneroglu said pointing out that the request for the visit was submitted by the defense commission.
He said that the Turkish Foreign Ministry would examine the list of the lawmakers willing to visit the base and make the final decision on the issue.
Yeneroglu noted that Jordan could not become an alternative for deploying the German troops instead of Turkey, referring to the remarks of Merkel, who said that Germany considered relocating troops from Incirlik to Jordan.
“Everybody knows in Germany that Jordan cannot become the alternative for Incirlik – that is just impossible because that will mean the relocation of all the coalition forces, not only Germans, to Jordan and this is an issue that cannot be seriously discussed at a technical level now,” the lawmaker added.
The Turkish Incirlik air base stations hundreds of German personnel and several Tornado jets to carry out airstrikes against the the Islamic State terror group (banned in Russia) in Iraq and Syria alongside the United States and several other NATO member states.
