BERLIN
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan met German Chancellor Angela Merkel over a working luncheon in Berlin on Wednesday.
Turkish Deputy Premier Bekir Bozdag, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and EU Minister Egemen Bagis also attended the meeting which lasted 1.5 hours.
Erdogan and Merkel will hold a joint press conference.
Erdogan will later receive representatives of non-governmental organizations in Germany.
Turkish premier urges EU for concrete action on PKK
Turkey's prime minister has called on the European Union to take concrete action against the terrorist PKK organization.
"European Union's position on the terrorist group is decisive. But we want to see tangible results from such a decisive stance. There should not be a western-supported terrorist group. We have extradition agreements with many western countries and we want to see these agreements in actual work," Erdogan told reporters during a joint press conference Wednesday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin.
Erdogan said fight against terrorism required "an intensive cooperation," adding that he was pleased to hear from Merkel that Germany would boost its support for Turkey to struggle PKK terrorism.
PKK is recognized as a terrorist organization by the European Union. The group has recently stepped up attacks on Turkish security forces in its three-decade separatist movement which claimed the lives of more than 30,000 people.
Touching on the Syria crisis, Erdogan said Germany's contributions were crucial to find settlement to the problem, adding that Germany's relations with Russia and China were of particular importance.
"The number of Syrian refugees in Turkey reached 105 thousand. And their numbers in Lebanon and Jordan have reached 300 thousand. In Syria, 2.5 million people are internally displaced. This is a catastrophe and we need to stop it together," Erdogan said.
On relations with Israel, Erdogan said ties with the Jewish state would not go back to normal unless Israel complied with Turkey's demands after a deadly raid on a Gaza-bound convoy that killed nine Turkish nationals.
"Normalization process will not begin unless they issue a formal apology, pay redress to the relatives of the victims and remove embargoes on Palestine," Erdogan said.
Erdogan arrived in Berlin on Tuesday to inaugurate the new building of the Turkish Embassy in the German capital.
