Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has received an official invitation to attend next week’s informal summit of European Union foreign ministers in Brussels, a gesture that has not happened for five years and which Ankara hopes will mark the beginning of an improvement in relations between Turkey and the EU.
According to Turkish media reports on Thursday, Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Öncü Keçeli explained that Fidan will attend the informal meeting – known as Gymnich – to be held on 29 August in Brussels. ‘We are confident that this step will create in the future an appropriate basis for reversing the resolutions adopted by the EU Foreign Policy Committee on 15 July 2019, which led to a stalemate in our relations,’ Keçeli said. ‘This invitation is a sign that the need to improve ties between Turkey and the EU in the face of regional and global challenges is also understood in the European Union,’ he stressed.
The Turkish foreign ministry spokesman stated that this rapprochement should not be limited to meetings such as those in Gymnich, but that it is crucial for Ankara and Brussels to deepen cooperation in all fields in a sustainable and predictable manner. Keçeli also recalled that the same policy should be followed with pending issues such as Turkey’s accession negotiations, customs union reform and visa liberalisation, among others.
The informal meeting of EU foreign affairs ministers, known as ‘Gymnich’ after the name of a German town where the first meeting of this kind was held in 1974, brings together foreign affairs representatives from all the member countries; the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, is also expected to attend. The meeting on 29 August is expected to focus on the war in Ukraine, relations with Russia and Israel’s offensive in Gaza.
As a candidate country, Turkey was regularly invited to informal meetings of EU ministers until 2019, when strained relations between Turkey and Greece over the Cyprus dispute led the EU-27 to threaten Ankara with sanctions and the suspension of negotiations in multiple areas. Despite the Eurasian country’s great strategic importance for the EU, and although bilateral relations have improved in recent years, Turkey’s EU accession negotiations nevertheless remain stalled due to what the Turkish government denounces as the domestic political interests of some member states.
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Edited and reviewed by:
Pablo Gómez is a specialist in Turkey and has been editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia since 2011. He has been analysing current affairs and geopolitics in Turkey and the surrounding region since 2006.
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