German govt approves more troops for NATO mission in Turkey
RT.com
12 Oct, 2016
The German federal government has approved participation in a NATO mission to fly surveillance craft from a Turkish base, making progress on a deal that had been stalled amid tensions with Ankara.
Germany is meant to provide a third of the troops necessary for the AWACS (airborne warning and control system) flights, which will be launched from the Konya airbase in southern Turkey and will provide radar data for US-led coalition sorties in Syria and Iraq. The deployment is yet to be given the go ahead by the German parliament, however, with a vote expected in November.
The mission was approved by NATO in July and is mostly meant as a symbolic gesture, which would make NATO part of the US-led coalition fighting terrorist group Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) in Syria and Iraq. The alliance is already flying some AWACS from the Konya base, but they are not part of the Syrian mission and were deployed starting early 2016 in the wake of the Turkish downing of a Russian warplane last year.
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