Germany Mulls Moving Anti-Daesh Operations Base From Turkey to Jordan

Germany military officials will travel to Jordan’s capital Amman this weekend to investigate a possible relocation of Tornado spy jets from southern Turkey, sources told a German newspaper on Friday.

BERLIN (Sputnik) — Earlier this year, Berlin prolonged until the end of 2017 the deployment of six Tornado jets and hundreds of German personnel to Turkey’s Incirlik airbase despite strained relations between the two countries. The jets are used to collect intelligence on Daesh militants in Syria and Iraq.

"It is not clear yet whether it will be necessary to pull out German armed forces from Incirlik," a spokesperson for the Defense Ministry told the Bild newspaper.

The Ministry’s mission, due to arrive in Amman on Saturday, will study options at its disposal, although the military told the outlet the relocation would mean a weeks-long pause in Tornado operations against the jihadist group outlawed in Russia. It is also considering airbases in Kuwait and Cyprus, Bild claimed.

German-Turkish relations deteriorated after the German parliament’s decision in June to label the 1915 massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire as genocide. Following this decision, Ankara restricted a delegation of German lawmakers' access to the air base. Nonetheless, in October, Turkey allowed the delegation to visit the German servicemen at the base.