Turkey Live Coverage (21 June): A Questionable Military Declaration
Thursday, June 21, 2012 at 12:04See also Syria, Egypt (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Trapped in Homs...and Hama...and Douma...and...
1700 GMT: Following EU members' authorization of the European Commission to launch talks about an action plan and Turkey's acceptance of an initial readmission agreement that is considered critical for the union in combating irregular migration, Turkish citizens can travel across EU countries without visa requirements. Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said:
The first synchronized move will be made and the process will start. I believe this is a very historic step.
We will sign the readmission agreement when the EU presents the action plan. And we will ratify the readmission agreement when the EU starts implementing the action plan. We will begin implementing the readmission agreement when the action plan finally produces visa exemption.
Meanwhile, Cyprus (southern administration) managed to convince all member countries to include the statement of "cooperation with all EU countries" in the readmission agreement.
1545 GMT: Pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) co-chair Selahatin Demirtas responded to PKK leader Murat Karayilan's "there were 11 people including people from BDP in the Oslo meetings" statement:
To be honest, we, as BDP co-chairs, have never been involved in any of those Oslo meetings. We had information regarding neither the content of meetings in Imrali [where PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan is kept in prison] nor that in Oslo. However, we were receiving signals that these meetings were held indirectly. We did not know who was meeting with whom, where and where there were meeting.
