The head of EU diplomacy, Kaja Kallas, met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara on Tuesday, with whom she spoke about strengthening mutual relations. The meeting took place a week before the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit in Turkey and was attended by EU Commissioner for Home Affairs and Migration Magnus Brunner and Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kosová. TASR informs about it based on the report of the DPA agency.
“Turkey is a key partner in security, migration and energy, as well as a candidate country for EU membership,” stated Kallas on the X network. She discussed with Erdogan the importance of good neighborly relations, the war in Ukraine, conflicts in the Middle East and preparations for the NATO summit. “Turkey makes a significant contribution to the protection of the Eastern flank of the Alliance,” she reminded.
The summit of NATO leaders in Turkey will take place on July 7 and 8. There have been many arrests in the run-up to the summit, and a large-scale ban on demonstrations has been in place in the Turkish capital since Sunday. The human rights organization Amnesty International has therefore criticized the visit of EU representatives, which, according to them, is taking place at a time when the Turkish authorities are restricting freedom of speech and the press.
“Economic partnerships that sacrifice human rights cannot be the solution to the geopolitical problems of our time,” Amnesty Turkey wrote on X and called on the representatives of the Union to push for the immediate release of the detainees. Turkey has been a candidate country for the EU since 1999. Accession negotiations began six years later, but have been frozen since 2018, mainly due to insufficient respect for human rights and the rule of law.
