Erdogan to visit Germany for talks on Syria

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will hold talks next week with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on bilateral ties and the crisis in Syria, her spokesman said here on Friday. Erdogan will arrive in Berlin Tuesday to open a new Turkish embassy building with Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and his German counterpart Guido Westerwelle. On Wednesday the prime minister will meet Merkel for a working lunch followed by a joint news conference. "They will discuss bilateral relations, international issues and of course the situation in Syria," Steffen Seibert said. Germany and Turkey as NATO partners are also linked by the around three million people of Turkish origin living in Germany -- the largest immigrant population in the country -- most of them descendants of the millions who arrived under a "guest workers" programme launched in the 1960s. Syria's bloody civil war has spilled across its border into Turkey with deadly shelling and a flood of refugees. Ankara has asked for European help to grapple with the problem, and Germany has joined other world powers in urging restraint as cross-border tensions flare. From DailyStar