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President and Justice and Development Party (AKP) Chair Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has made statements at İstanbul Atatürk Airport before moving to Varna, Bulgaria to attend the Turkey-EU meeting.
Some of the highlights from Erdoğan’s statement are as follows:
“Ties have improved during our terms”
“We will move towards Varna in a while with our ministers. We’ve accepted the invitation of [President of the European Commission Jean-Claude] Juncker and [President of the European Council Donald] Tusk. This summit will the fifth assembly of Turkey and the EU since 2015.
“We have rooted ties with the EU. Turkey-EU ties have improved than ever before during our terms. We’ve also seen times in which tension escalated.
“As Turkey, we’ve continued our journey on the purpose of full membership without minding the mines planted on our road. Membership continues to be our strategic goal today as well”.
"EU doesn't fulfill its obligations"
“We will reiterate to EU leaders that we expect political and artificial obstacles to be removed during the negotiation period. We will remind parties once again that Turkey doesn’t tolerate double standards.
“We have high-level dialogue mechanisms about a lot of topics. It has displayed how fruitful those can be with the migration agreement in 2016. The EU hasn’t acted in truthfulness to fulfill its obligations unlike us. Only a fractional amount of financial contributions has reached us. We will discuss these matters in detail today”. (PT/TK)
