Germany may withdraw its troops from the Incirlik airbase in southern Turkey after its delegation was barred from visiting the facility, parliamentary speaker Norbert Lammert told local media, Sputnik News reports.
“It should probably be underscored again that Bundestag only allows sending German soldiers on international missions abroad when they are needed and welcome there,” Lammert told the German newspaper Sueddeutschen Zeitung on Monday.
The lawmaker, who presides over Bundestag, the lower house of the national parliament, added that German troops “will not stay for long where they are not welcome”.
The German parliament’s decision in June to label the 1915 massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire as genocide soured relations between NATO allies, prompting Ankara to bar German lawmakers from visiting the Incirlik airbase last month.