On Thursday, Turkey Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu will land in Brussels to meet with European Union officials to start to ‘build Turkey’s future in Europe’. Next week, Turkey is expected to resume talks with Greece to resolve their maritime disputes after a five-year hiatus. The clash in the eastern Mediterranean between Ankara and Athens has brought the two states to the brink of war and is one of a long list of reasons why Turkey has so far failed to ‘build’ that ‘future in Europe’.
Speaking to the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen earlier this month, Erdogan vowed to ‘turn a new page’ in relations with the EU, expressing his desire for an update to the 2016 migration deal, which saw visa relaxations for Turkish citizens and £2.7 billion in EU funding. In return, Turkey halted the flow of migrants heading for Europe.
The EU isn’t the only front where Turkey is hinting at, if not diplomatic revisionism, then at least renewed opportunism.
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