Berlin: Malcolm Turnbull and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have discussed submarines, people smuggling, and the humanitarian crisis caused by the Syrian civil war in their first ever one-on-one talks held on Friday in the German capital.

While they canvassed the refugee crisis, Mr Turnbull expressly declined to "advise" European governments on their management of the refugee challenge, a refusal seen as a pointed repudiation of the recent speech of Tony Abbott in London where he warned that good intentions were leading the European continent into "catastrophic error".

And, they've agreed that bombing achieves only so much and that the west must focus more attention on reaching a negotiated settlement of the Syrian conflict, opening the prospect of dialogue with the murderous extremists of Islamic State – and or the conditional backing of the criminal despot of Syria, Bashar al-Assad.

In his clearest enunciation of a position on Syria since coming to the prime ministership, Mr Turnbull appeared to diverge from the Abbott approach of doing more militarily, instead telling reporters after the talks during a joint press conference that it was "perfectly clear" that the solution to Syria would be political, not military.