BERLIN/ANKARA (Dispatches) -- Germany began on Sunday to pull its troops out of a Turkish air base where they have supported military operations in Syria following a row with Ankara over access, a German defense ministry spokesman said.
The withdrawal from the Incirlik base, approved by the German parliament last month, marks a further step in one of many bilateral disputes, ranging from a post-coup clampdown by Ankara to Turkish political campaigning in Germany.
German tornado jets were due to keep operating out of Incirlik at least until the end of July as part of a mission providing reconnaissance aircraft to support U.S. operations in Iraq and Syria.
In the meantime the necessary material was to be moved to a new air base in Jordan, where the planes are scheduled to be deployed by October.
A German air tanker refueler left Incirlik for the Jordan base on Sunday, the ministry spokesman told Reuters.
A Turkish official confirmed that the withdrawal had started, saying Germany's defense minister had informed her Turkish counterpart of the withdrawal date when they met during the NATO summit in Brussels.
Turkey had refused to allow German lawmakers to make what they saw as a routine visit to the base, saying that Berlin needed to improve its attitude towards Turkey first.
Germany had banned some Turkish politicians from campaigning on its soil for a referendum on giving President Recept Tayyip Erdogan sweeping new powers. Ankara responded by accusing Berlin of "Nazi-like" tactics and reigniting the dispute over Incirlik.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Saturday that a bilateral meeting with Erdogan had revealed "deep differences" between the two NATO allies.
"The many arrests, the overall actions in Turkey, and the failure to allow visits to Incirlik (air base) - those are all developments that show deep differences and we did not sweep them under the table," Merkel told reporters after the end of the two-day G20 summit in Hamburg.
 Turkey's sweeping arrests of alleged state enemies after last year's coup attempt and a dispute about the NATO base "are developments which I of course raised that show deep differences," Merkel said. "And we didn't sweep those under the table".