Germany takes step to soothe Turkey ire over Armenia vote

Germany's government reiterated today that a parliamentary resolution recognising Turkey's World War I-era massacre of Armenians as "genocide" was non-binding but denied it was distancing itself from the vote to appease Ankara.
Chancellor Angela Merkel said it was clear that the June vote, which infuriated Turkey, had no legally binding character but was "a political statement".
But she rejected claims, made by news site Spiegel Online, that by publicly reiterating this point, her government was caving in to Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
"The federal government is not distancing itself from this resolution. I want to explicitly deny that," said Merkel, echoing earlier comments by her spokesman Steffen Seibert.

Merkel also told RTL television that in talks with Turkey "we have pointed out that resolutions are not legally binding, they are political statements".
A Spiegel reporter fired back at the government, tweeting that it was "doing exactly what it says in the report which (it) is denying: explicitly pointing out that the resolution is non-binding".

A veteran lawmaker of the far-left Die Linke party, Gregor Gysi, also accused the government of having "de facto distanced" itself from the resolution "under pressure from Erdogan".
Already tense relations between Berlin and Ankara took a nose-dive after the Armenia vote three months ago.

Erdogan angrily charged that the 11 German lawmakers with Turkish roots who backed it should undergo "blood tests" to see "what kind of Turks they are".
Turkey has since then denied German lawmakers the right to visit their national troops on the Incirlik NATO air base, used by Western allies to fight jihadists in Syria.
There are also fears the growing discord could endanger an EU-Ankara agreement under which Turkey has moved to halt the mass flow of refugees and migrants into Europe.
Merkel said that she hoped lawmakers could soon visit Incirlik, and also vowed that the EU would stick to its side of the refugee bargain, including easing visa rules for Turks, as long as Ankara fulfilled all conditions.

But she warned that "time is running out" to reach an agreement in October as originally planned.
German-Turkish ties have been under strain for some time, with Berlin also speaking out against Turkey's tough line against critical journalists and its Kurdish minority, and the mass arrests that followed July's failed.