The Latest: Turkish journalist won't attend press conference

BERLIN (AP) — The Latest on the Turkish president's visit to Germany (all times local):

12:40 p.m.

An exiled Turkish journalist says he won't attend a press conference in Germany with Chancellor Angela Merkel and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after learning the Turkish leader was considering canceling if he were there.

Can Dundar, the former editor of Turkey's opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper, said Friday in a video message on Twitter that German journalists assured him they would ask questions on his behalf.

He says: "Erdogan would have canceled the press conference using me as an excuse and would have avoided answering questions."

Dundar was convicted in 2016 of revealing state secrets after his newspaper published photographs suggesting that Turkey's intelligence agency was involved in sending weapons to Syrian rebels, and fled for Germany that year.

Erdogan, who says Dundar is a terrorist, is on a three-day visit to Germany.

___

9:50 a.m.

Germany's president is entering talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan with the hope that the state visit leads to a thaw in relations between the two NATO allies.

President Frank-Walter Steinmeier told the RND media group Friday that the three-day visit to Germany isn't "an expression of normalization (of relations), we are a long way from that, but it could be a start."

The two countries are strategically critical to one another, with Turkey looking to Germany and the European Union for help with its economic woes, and the EU counting on Ankara to reduce the flow of migrants to Europe.

But they've clashed over numerous issues to the point where Erdogan accused German officials of acting like Nazis, prompting Chancellor Angela Merkel to condemn the Turkish president's words.