EU seeks closer cooperation with Turkey against ISIL

BRUSSELS, May 18 (KUNA) -- The EU and Turkey Monday underlined importance to strengthen cooperation on foreign policy issues, anti-terrorism and fight against ISIL.
"The meeting provided a timely opportunity to review EU-Turkey relations and exchange views on a range of issues. The EU underlined the importance of dialogue on foreign policy issues," Edgars Rinkevics, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Latvia, told a press conference after the EU-Turkey Association Council held its 53rd session here today.
Rinkevics, whose country holds the current EU Presidency, chaired the meeting on behalf of the 28-member European bloc.
He underlined the "very serious developments in the region, in particular in Syria and Iraq," and commended the considerable efforts made by Turkey in hosting around two million refugees fleeing the violence in Syria and Iraq.
A statement issued after the meeting noted that "the EU proposed to develop closer cooperation against ISIL," and confirmed its intention to strengthen counter-terrorism cooperation and underlined the importance of developing police and judicial cooperation with Turkey in the fight against terrorism.
On his part, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told the joint press conference that they discussed the situation in Iraq and Syria and noted that ISIL is still controlling 30 percent of the territory in Iraq.
"Therefore we should increase our support to Iraqi government, to Peshmarga forces and also to the national guards of Mosul. We appreciate the support coming from coalition members and their allies," he said.
The Turkish minister said the situation in Syria "remains the same, even getting worse and worse.
"The regime is the root cause of the problem in Syria and we need to deal with the root cause. To do so, we need better and comprehensive strategies for Syria. This is what we discussed here today and last week also in NATO (foreign ministers meeting in Antalya)," he said.
He stressed the Turkish government's commitment to continue reforms, but lamented that the pace of EU-Turkey membership negotiations "is far from satisfactory due to political obstacles from some EU member states." EU and Turkey began membership negotiations in 2005 but till today only one chapter or policy issue out of the 37 chapters have been concluded.
Also, both EU and Turkey welcomed the re-launch of UN-led negotiations on Cyprus. (end) nk.hb