During his visit, Rasmussen will meet President Abdullah Gül and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu. He will also attend a joint meeting of the parliamentary Defense and Foreign Policy Committees and the NATO Parliamentary Assembly (NATO PA) Turkish group.
Rasmussen will also be a keynote speaker at a panel jointly organized by Turkey and NATO on Friday.
Before coming to Turkey, Rasmussen said during a visit to Athens that the Cyprus problem negatively affects NATO and EU relations, Greek media reported. He stated he hopes that a solution to the Cyprus issue will be finally arrived at before July 1, the date Greek Cyprus assumes the EU presidency. Rasmussen lamented that NATO-EU cooperation could not reach its full potential due to the Cyprus problem.
Rasmussen, who has worked intensively in the past for an arrangement to clear the way for closer NATO-EU military cooperation, said in remarks last week that he will not be taking any new initiatives to Ankara during his visit next week. Turkey is blocking further NATO-EU cooperation because of the unresolved Cyprus dispute, while EU member Greek Cyprus blocks Turkish membership in the European Defense Agency. “I won’t bring new initiatives to Ankara during my visit. I will repeat what I said previously, that irrespective of the Cyprus conflict, ” he said, adding however that “his Turkish interlocutors would be surprised if he did not raise the issue.”
