VARNA, Bulgaria: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday meets the leaders of the EU’s top bodies for a potentially stormy encounter that will seek ways to repair an increasingly fractured relationship.
European Union President Donald Tusk and European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker will talk with Erdogan at the Bulgarian Black Sea resort of Varna with a litany of problems clouding their discussions.
Topics including the crackdown in Turkey after the July 2016 failed coup, Turkish demands for visa liberalization and the near-endless saga of Ankara’s own EU membership bid are expected to loom high.
And while all the leaders were hoping at least a more harmonious mood music would come out of the working dinner, a row over Greece and Cyprus added a new shadow days before the talks.
Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the EU Council, said it was expected to be “a very difficult meeting.”
But both sides — with a joint interest in improving security cooperation and economic relations — will also not want the talks to fail.
“The Varna summit will provide a platform to re-launch the dialogue between the two parties, even though no real breakthrough is expected in concrete terms,” said Jana Jabbour, professor of political science at Sciences Po university in Paris and the author of a book on Turkish foreign policy.
Temperatures were raised after EU leaders last week condemned Turkey’s “illegal actions” toward Greece and Cyprus in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean Sea.
Ankara hit back at the “unacceptable comments” and said the EU had lost its objectivity on Cyprus, which is divided between the Greek-majority internationally recognized Republic of Cyprus and the breakaway Turkish Cypriot north.
The statement on Thursday by the 28 EU members meeting in Brussels condemned Turkey over Ankara’s arrest of two Greek soldiers and its promise to prevent the Greek Cypriot government from exploring for oil and gas.
Turkish EU Minister Omer Celik said Turkey could not accept such statements by the EU.
“This issue will be raised in Varna, where we hope to have a wide-ranging discussion on EU-Turkey relations and on the way ahead,” Tusk said.
Juncker said he was “looking with mixed feelings toward the summit because the differences in views between the EU and Turkey are many.”
But, he added “we will have a frank and open debate with President Erdogan.”
Ankara and Brussels had in March 2016 agreed a controversial deal to stop the flow of migrants, in what was seen as a landmark in cooperation and which Turkey hoped would yield visa free travel to Europe.
So far this incentive has not been realized and Erdogan is expected to press this strongly in the talks.
“Turkey considers it (visa liberalization) a priority,” Jabbour told AFP.
But, she added, “it would be delusional to believe that the EU would grant Turkey concessions on this matter.”
Brussels has repeatedly criticized the post coup crackdown which has seen nearly 160,000 people arrested, including dozens of journalists.
Turkey, for its part, accused Brussels of failing to show solidarity after the coup and appears set on forging a strong partnership with President Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
In contrast to the evening meeting with the EU leadership, Putin is expected to make a full two-day visit to Turkey early next month.
Ankara’s long-stalled bid to join the EU will also be discussed during the summit, but Western diplomats and analysts agree meaningful steps are unlikely.
Even Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Turkey did not have “any expectations right now from the EU regarding the membership process.”
Nonetheless, Erdogan has for now dropped from speeches his threats to reimpose the death penalty in Turkey, a move that would automatically end the EU membership bid.
Next month the bloc will release its latest progress report, which is “bound to illustrate a substantial regression” in Turkey, Marc Pierini, a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe and a former EU ambassador to Turkey, said in a study.
During a visit by Erdogan, French President Emmanuel Macron said earlier this year Ankara should settle instead for a looser “partnership,” after suggesting no progress was possible.
Turkey’s Erdogan, EU chiefs meet to mend eroded ties
Turkey’s Erdogan, EU chiefs meet to mend eroded ties
Power outages hit Ukraine and Moldova as Kyiv struggles against the winter cold
- Outages had been caused by a technical malfunction affecting power lines linking Ukraine and Moldova
- Blackouts were reported in Kyiv, as well as Zhytomyr and Kharkiv regions
KYIV: Emergency power cuts swept across several Ukrainian cities as well as neighboring Moldova on Saturday, officials said, amid a commitment from the Kremlin to US President Donald Trump to pause strikes on Kyiv as Ukraine battles one of its bleakest winters in years.
Ukraine’s Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal said that the outages had been caused by a technical malfunction affecting power lines linking Ukraine and Moldova.
The failure “caused a cascading outage in Ukraine’s power grid,” triggering automatic protection systems, he said.
Blackouts were reported in Kyiv, as well as Zhytomyr and Kharkiv regions, in the center and northeast of the country respectively. The outage cut water supplies to the Ukrainian capital, officials said, while the city’s subway system was temporarily suspended because of low voltage on the network.
Moldova also experienced major power outages, including in the capital Chisinau, officials said.
“Due to the loss of power lines on the territory of Ukraine, the automatic protection system was triggered, which disconnected the electricity supply,” Moldova’s Energy Minister Dorin Junghietu said in a post on Facebook. “I encourage the population to stay calm until electricity is restored.”
Weaponizing winter
The large-scale outage followed weeks of Russian strikes against Ukraine’s already struggling energy grid, which have triggered long stretches of severe power shortages.
Moscow has sought to deny Ukrainian civilians heat, light and running water over the course of the war, in a strategy that Ukrainian officials describe as “weaponizing winter.”
While Russia has used similar tactics throughout the course of its almost four-year invasion of Ukraine, temperatures throughout this winter have fallen further than usual, bringing widespread hardship to civilians.
Forecasters say Ukraine will experience a brutally cold period stretching into next week. Temperatures in some areas will drop to minus 30 degrees Celsius (minus 22 Fahrenheit), Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said.
Trump said late Thursday that President Vladimir Putin had agreed to a temporary pause in targeting Kyiv and other Ukrainian towns amid the extreme weather.
“I personally asked President Putin not to fire on Kyiv and the cities and towns for a week during this ... extraordinary cold,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting at the White House. Putin has “agreed to that,” he said, without elaborating on when the request to the Russian leader was made.
The White House didn’t immediately respond to a query seeking clarity about the scope and timing of any limited pause.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed Friday that Trump “made a personal request” to Putin to stop targeting Kyiv until Sunday “in order to create favorable conditions for negotiations.”
Talks are expected to take place between US, Russian and Ukrainian officials on Feb. 1 in Abu Dhabi. The teams previously met in late January in the first known time that officials from the Trump administration simultaneously met with negotiators from both Ukraine and Russia. However, it’s unclear many obstacles to peace remain. Disagreement over what happens to occupied Ukrainian territory, and Moscow’s demand for possession of territory it hasn’t captured, are a key issue holding up a peace deal, Zelensky said Thursday.
Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev said on social media Saturday that he was in Miami, where talks between Russian and US negotiators have previously taken place.
Russia struck Ukrainian energy assets in several regions on Thursday but there were no strikes on those facilities overnight, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday.
In a post on social media, Zelensky also noted that Russia has turned its attention to targeting Ukrainian logistics networks, and that Russian drones and missiles hit residential areas of Ukraine overnight, as they have most nights during the war.
Trump has framed Putin’s acceptance of the pause in strikes as a concession. But Zelensky was skeptical as Russia’s invasion approaches its fourth anniversary on Feb. 24 with no sign that Moscow is willing to reach a peace settlement despite a US-led push to end the fighting.
“I do not believe that Russia wants to end the war. There is a great deal of evidence to the contrary,” Zelensky said Thursday.
