Brussels, 05/10/2015 (Agence Europe) - During his visit to Brussels on Monday 5 October, Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for greater cooperation to fight terrorism.
“The key to fighting terrorism effectively is to have international cooperation and solidarity”, he said at a joint press conference with European Council President Donald Tusk. “The issue of terrorism is of critical importance for our region and our country”, he said. “We must work collectively to fight terrorism”, he added, regretting that while the EU recognises the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) as a terrorist organisation, this is badly translated “into practice” in the member states.
Erdogan also said that a “terrorist organisation should not have the opportunity of being legitimised because it fights against Daesh”, and he added that in his view the Democratic Union Party (PYD) was also a terrorist organisation. “There is no good terrorism versus bad terrorism. Daesh is a terrorist organisation as are the PYD and PKK”, he insisted. Erdogan said he hoped that the EU member states would show the “necessary sensitivity” as far as this is concerned.
In addition to fighting terrorism, Erdogan and Tusk also discussed the migrant crisis (see other article) and the Syrian crisis. “We discussed the urgent need to find a solution to the conflict in Syria. We agreed that the solution cannot come about by having Russia allied with [Bashar al-]Assad who is bombing the legitimate opposition forces”, Tusk stated. Erdogan called for a no-fly zone and for a buffer zone to be created in the north of Syria, which would be safe and where Syrians could be resettled. During a press conference, European Parliament President Martin Schulz stated that a buffer zone would require an agreement of the United Nations Security Council.
More generally, Erdogan said that he would like the dialogue and consultation between the EU and Turkey to be deeper. In his view, “it is impossible to consider the future of Europe separate from Turkey”, and his country's EU accession continues to be a “strategic choice”. “We must avoid artificial political barriers being put up in the accession process, and this process should be reinvigorated”, he said. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker stated that he was “strongly engaged” in Turkey's EU accession process. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)