“The developments in our region show how important Turkey is for the EU. In this field what is essential is to increase Turkey’s prospect of membership. Italy is aware of this and has always given us support. . And this will go on. ” Thus the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, at a press conference in Ankara alongside Prime Minister Mario Draghi, after the signing of a series of bilateral agreements.
“I am very happy to host my friend Mr. Draghi, Prime Minister of Italy, and his delegation. I would like to offer my condolences to the deceased during this accident in the Alps and I hope that the injured will recover as soon as possible,” he said. Erdogan opening the press conference.
Draghi’s visit to Turkey marks a strengthening of relations between Rome and Ankara, which had ruined in April 2021, when Draghi, following the “ chair accident ” that saw Erdogan, Charles Michel and Ursula von der Leyen as protagonists , Erdogan had defined a “dictator”, who is in any case “needed” and with whom it is therefore necessary to “cooperate”.
Ukraine
“At the moment we do not have a crisis in the food sector, but in Africa there is a huge problem. We try to be an intermediary and, even under the umbrella of the United Nations, in a week, ten days we try to reach a result “for the unblocking of grain exports from Ukraine through the Black Sea.” On the occasion of the summit – continued Erdogan – we talked about the Ukrainian crisis. Black Sea we talked about these problems with the prime minister “.
Migrants
Greece’s migration policy “is now beginning to become a danger for Italy”. Irregular migrants “now want to take refuge in Italy. We too make every effort to save these people at sea, but it is a common problem with Italy, so I would also like to hear the opinion of President Mario Draghi”, said the president Turkish, answering a question posed by a Turkish journalist about Athens’ migration policy, which is allegedly based on “push-backs”.
Defence
With Italy “we have military and defense relations: this is very important and we agree to develop and deepen them”, said Erdogan. Today “we have signed nine different agreements. Thank goodness, our economic and commercial relations are more developed every day. Despite the pandemic, the volume of our trade has increased 34 times and we have exceeded 23 billion. It has the characteristic of being very balanced: this year we can reach 25 billion dollars. We will encourage our companies to increase collaboration “.
Terrorism
“On the agenda” of today’s meeting “there was also the fight against terrorism: we have expectations from Italy in this field and I talked about it with the Prime Minister”, Mario Draghi.
Libya
During today’s summit “we also talked about regional issues, starting with Libya. Italy is very important, even in the energy field. We have several projects in common and we talked about it: I hope it will be useful for our two countries”.
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