German Chancellor Angela Merkel will travel to Gaziantep in Turkey on Saturday 23 April along with representatives of the European Union, her spokesman said on Friday, April 15, according to Reuters.

Steffen Seibert said at a government news conference that European Council President Donald Tusk and European Commission First Vice-President Frans Timmermans would also be going.

The visit comes amid a diplomatic row between Germany and Turkey. Ankara has requested that German comedian Jan Boehmermann be prosecuted over a sexually crude poem he recited on German television about Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan.