Turkey’s foreign minister suggested Wednesday Ankara was ready to calm a row over a German parliamentary resolution labeling the Ottoman massacre of Armenians a genocide but warned against treating Turkey as a “second-class country”.

The bitter dispute has seen Turkey barring German lawmakers from visiting their nation’s troops at the Turkish airbase of Incirlik.

Germany last week stressed that the June parliamentary vote was a political statement and not legally binding, and voiced hope its parliamentarians would be able to visit Incirlik in October.

Asked about the request, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told Die Welt daily that “if Germany continues to conduct itself as it does now, then we will consider it”.

“But if Germany tries to treat Turkey badly, then this won’t be the case,” he added, according to the newspaper’s German translation, stressing that “Turkey is not a second-class country”.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel met Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at a G20 summit in China at the weekend and afterwards said she hoped for progress “in the coming days” on the requested airbase visit.

Source: AFP