Germany to deport thousands of Turks with rejected asylum applications

BERLIN: Germany and Turkiye have agreed a plan under which Berlin will sharply step up deportations of failed Turkish asylum seekers, the interior minister said on Friday.

“We have now reached a point where returns to Turkiye can be carried out more quickly and effectively and that Turkiye will more speedily take back citizens who are not allowed to stay in Germany,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said in a statement on X.

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

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) daily reported that Turkiye 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 was 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.

The move comes at a time of 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.