Germany, Turkey at odds over migrant deportation deal

Germany said on Friday it had agreed a plan with Turkey under which Berlin will step up deportations of failed Turkish asylum seekers but Ankara denied any such deal had been struck.

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser posted on X that “we have now reached a point where returns to Turkey can be carried out more quickly and effectively and that Turkey will more speedily take back citizens who are not allowed to stay in Germany.

“This is another building block in limiting irregular migration.”

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) daily reported that Turkey had offered to soon take back up to 500 citizens per week on “special flights”.

In return, Germany would ease visa rules for Turkish citizens wanting to visit the EU country for holidays or business trips, it said.

The FAZ report said the plan had been agreed after months of talks between the offices of Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The German interior ministry declined to officially comment on the details of the reports when contacted by AFP.

But later Friday, Turkey’s foreign ministry said the reports “regarding the return of our citizens who do not have a legal right to reside in Germany to Turkey is not true.

“No practice of mass deportation of our citizens has been authorised,” a ministry spokesman said in a message on social media platform X.

– Government under pressure –

There has been heated debate about irregular immigration in Germany and other EU member states.

Germany’s relations are sensitive with Turkey, a fellow NATO member and home to Europe’s largest Turkish diaspora of some three million people.

Many of them are part of the wave of so-called “guest workers” invited to Germany in the 1960s and 1970s, and their descendants.

The Scholz government has been under heightened pressure after a series of violent crimes and extremist attacks committed by asylum seekers.

The debate has fuelled the rise of the far-right and anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party a year ahead of national elections.

The FAZ reported that an initial 200 Turkish citizens would be flown out to Turkey on several scheduled flights leaving from a number of airports.

Beyond that, it said Turkey had offered to take back up to 500 citizens per week from Germany on what would be declared “special flights” rather than charter flights.

The daily said the number of Turkish asylum requests in Germany rose sharply last year, with most applicants declaring they were members of the Kurdish minority.

This year, Turkish citizens accounted for the third-largest number of requests for asylum, after those from Syria and Afghanistan.

However, only a small minority of recent applications by Turkish nationals have been successful.

According to Germany’s interior ministry, the number of Turkish nationals in Germany required to leave has topped 15,000.

However, fewer than 900 were deported last year and thousands received stays of deportation, often because they declared they lacked valid travel documents, FAZ said.