Foreign Minister Analena Burbok and Secretary of the Interior Nancy Phaser tomorrow they will travel together to the earthquake-affected regions of Turkey, in order to be immediately informed about the situation and to meet German rescuers and volunteers.

At the same time, the federal government is under intense criticism for its stance on issuing travel visas to earthquake-stricken Turks who want to find refuge with their relatives in Germany.

“Ministers want to get an on-the-spot picture of aid from German organizations and talk to those affected about their needs,” a Foreign Office spokesman said.

From the very beginning, Germany has allocated humanitarian aid to Turkey and Syria, while units of the Federal Technical Assistance Service have moved to the region. During their stay in the city of Gaziantep, the two German ministers will also hold talks on simplifying the process of issuing visas from the disaster area.

Today, however, the Seebrücke organization criticized the slow process of issuing visas.

“The federal government deliberately made the visa requirements so complicated that they could then claim they wanted to help, but nobody took them up on the offer,” said the organization’s expert Maria Sonek, noting that providing documents is extremely difficult, as the more have been lost in the ruins. In the same vein, the Turkish Community of Germany requests simpler procedures. “So far the procedures have been sluggish and not as red tape-free as we would have hoped,” Community President Jezelikaya Yurtbai told German public broadcaster ARD and asked that the measure not be limited to first- and second-degree relatives of already residents. Germany. “There are people in Germany who want to help even though they have no relatives in the affected areas“, he said.