Germany Expects Turkey to Honor EU Migrants Pact after PM Exit

Germany insisted Friday it expects Turkey to stick to a deal Berlin helped broker to limit refugee flows to the EU even after the announced resignation of its prime minister.

"The chancellor (Angela Merkel) has worked very well until now with Turkish Prime Minister (Ahmet) Davutoglu and all Turkish representatives and we assume that this good and constructive cooperation will continue with the new Turkish prime minister," German government spokesman Georg Streiter told reporters.

"The EU and Germany will continue to fulfill all their obligations under the agreement and we expect this from the Turkish side as well."

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier later told news website Spiegel Online that the EU pact "must be decisively implemented regardless of the people in office -- by Turkey as well as in Europe".

Davutoglu on Thursday announced he would step down in two weeks as ruling party chief and premier, in a shock departure expected to further tighten President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's grip on power.

The premier championed a March deal with the EU to stem the flow of refugees across the Aegean Sea -- an accord in which the president has shown little interest despite Turkey being on the verge of winning visa-free travel to Europe for its citizens.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said it was too soon to tell what "implications" the switch would have.

"We will obviously discuss this, first of all, with the Turkish authorities and define together how to move forward," she said Thursday on a visit to Kosovo.

European Parliament President Martin Schulz said the EU was counting on continuity despite the shake-up in Ankara.

"I hope that a future Turkish government, whoever will be the next prime minister, will continue on the line, that constructive line of cooperation for which Ahmet Davutoglu was very representative," he told reporters in Rome.

However Davutoglu's impending departure sparked fears for the pact in Germany, which saw the biggest influx of asylum seekers in the EU in 2015 with more than one million people seeking refuge from war, persecution and poverty.

A senior member of Merkel's Christian Democratic Union party, Norbert Roettgen, called the reshuffle "bad news for Europe and Turkey".

"Davutoglu wanted to move Turkey toward Europe on all issues that are important for Europe," he told German public radio. "Erdogan is dead-set against that."

German refugee rights group Pro Asyl said it feared for asylum seekers in Turkey after Erdogan consolidated his power.

"The forced resignation of Davutoglu shows that Turkey is still miles away from being a country under the rule of law," its managing director Guenter Burkhardt told AFP.