ANKARA/ISTANBUL

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on Tuesday underlined the importance of coming together with France "more often and discussing certain issues."

“Considering the important roles both countries play in NATO and in European security, we emphasized that there is a great deal we can do here as well, and that for this reason we need to come together more often and discuss certain issues," Fidan said during a joint press conference with his French counterpart Jean-Noel Barrot.

Expressing his satisfaction over hosting Barrot in Türkiye, he added that they held "very fruitful talks," and they addressed the ties between the two nations.

Fidan said they had the opportunity to discuss relations between France and the EU, as well as regional and global issues that are important to both France and Türkiye, and that the presidents of the two countries had provided them with political guidance to further advance Türkiye-France relations.

He said they are working with full effort on how to further advance commercial, economic, political, and other areas of relations between the two countries.

He noted that he discussed with his counterpart how to overcome the current deadlock in Türkiye–EU relations and what could be done.

“As you know, at the moment we have several objectives ahead of us. One of these is updating the Customs Union Agreement, and another is putting the visa liberalization agreement into effect. In other words, we discussed how we can move this issue forward, what steps we can take, and what other existing issues there are between us.

"In addition, within the framework of European security, we had a truly substantive exchange of views on how we can advance European security within NATO and what can be done," he further said.

- Regional and global issues discussed

Fidan stressed that the two countries have a broad agenda for regional cooperation and talks, which includes issues affecting global security, such as Syria, Gaza, developments in Iran, Mediterranean security, and the Russia-Ukraine war.

He noted that they discussed what could be done to ensure the ongoing fight against the terrorist organization ISIS (Daesh), emphasizing that this is an important issue.

He added that they had the opportunity to discuss the Coalition of the Willing's ongoing work, Türkiye's potential contributions in this regard, and the most recent stage of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.

Fidan said there were many issues he could not mention in his speech, which demonstrates the “breadth of the agenda” in relations between the two countries.

Fidan concluded by thanking his French counterpart for the visit and for the substantive discussions.