German Chancellor Angela Merkel visits Turkey on Thursday for the first time since the failed July coup, seeking to keep a key partnership alive after a series of crises.

Merkel is expected to meet both President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Binali Yildirim during the hugely sensitive one-day visit to the capital Ankara.

The relationship between the two NATO allies has been battered in the last months by a series of rows in the wake of the July 15 failed coup aimed at ousting Erdogan.

Berlin has repeatedly expressed unease over the extent of the crackdown that has seen some 43,000 people arrested in the wake of the putsch, under a state of emergency that has now lasted over half a year.

Erdogan, meanwhile, has vented his exasperation that Germany has not responded to requests for the extradition of hundreds of suspects linked to the coup, the Kurdish militant movement and the ultra-left.

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