PACE president to meet with Turkey’s Erdoğan

Rik Daems, president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, has added a meeting with the Turkish president to his working visit to Ankara, PACE announced on Tuesday.

For his visit between March 29 and 31, Daems had already scheduled meetings with top-level statesmen in Turkey, including Parliamentary Speaker Mustafa Şentop, Vice President Fuat Oktay, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu, Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gül, and Minister of Family, Labour and Social Services Minister Zehra Zümrüt.

The meeting with Erdoğan was added to the schedule during the visit, PACE said.

It's just been announced that @PACE_President @RikDaems, who is currently on a three-day working visit to Turkey, is due to meet President Erdoğan, among other high-level meetings.

Updated announcement...https://t.co/fqyxuDNoh8 pic.twitter.com/Ky7dO7cBTI

— PACE (@PACE_News) March 30, 2021

The PACE president’s visit comes ahead of EU chiefs Charles Michel and Ursula von der Leyen’s visit to Turkey scheduled for April 6, as Ankara and Brussels look to relaunch relations following last week’s EU leaders’ summit.

Following last week’s summit, bloc leaders agreed to a “phased, proportionate and reversible” relaunch of their cooperation with Ankara on migration and trade.