Germany refuses Turkish demand for access to imagery from campaign against ISIL

Germany has ruled out giving Turkey unfiltered access to imagery gathered by its Tornado fighter jets operating out of the İncirlik Air Base in southern Turkey as part of a broader fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the German Defense Ministry said, according to a report on German website Bild.de on Jan. 31. 

The statement came after another German media outlet, Der Spiegel, reported a diplomatic cable as saying that Turkey had linked its approval of German housing investments for its troops at the İncirlik base to getting access to imagery from Syria and Iraq collected by Germany's six Tornado reconnaissance air crafts based in the same air base. 

German lawmakers, concerned that Turkey could use the high-resolution aerial imagery in its military campaign against autonomy-seeking Kurds in Syria and Iraq, have put strict limits on how German forces can share the data they gather. 

The lawmakers also fear the imagery can reach Russia, after Turkey's recent rapprochement with the country following nine months of highly-strained relations due to Turkey's downing of a Russian fighter jet along its border with Syria on Nov. 24, 2015. 

The thorny issue, emerging a few days before Chancellor Angela Merkel is due to travel to Turkey on Feb. 2 to meet President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, could cause further strain in the already frayed relationship between the two NATO allies. 

The cable published by Der Spiegel described Turkey's push to tie the imagery issue to German plans to build new housing at the base as "blackmail." It said two senior Turkish officials, a senior military officer and a policy adviser of Erdoğan had issued the demand. 

A Defense Ministry spokesman said the German air force flew...