Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan has emphasised that ongoing geopolitical shifts have once again demonstrated the strategic importance of strengthening relations between T\u00fcrkiye and the European Union. Speaking during a meeting with Belgium\u2019s Queen Mathilde in Istanbul, Erdo\u011fan stressed that modernising the existing Customs Union to reflect current conditions is \u201ca key area necessitating swift progress\u201d on T\u00fcrkiye\u2019s path to full EU membership.<\/p>\n
Defence cooperation and bilateral potential<\/p>\n
According to a statement from T\u00fcrkiye\u2019s Communications Directorate, Erdo\u011fan also underlined that T\u00fcrkiye\u2019s participation in EU defence initiatives would serve the mutual interests of all sides. The president noted significant potential for Turkish-Belgian cooperation across trade, defence industry, energy, and agriculture, pledging continued efforts to further strengthen bilateral ties. He expressed hope that Queen Mathilde\u2019s engagements with Turkish business circles would yield concrete results.<\/p>\n
Global hosting role and green energy<\/p>\n
Erdo\u011fan highlighted T\u00fcrkiye\u2019s increasingly prominent diplomatic role, noting that Ankara will host the NATO leaders\u2019 summit on July 7-8 and the COP31 climate conference on November 9-20 this year. He also pointed to green energy transition as a key area of cooperation with Belgium, emphasising that T\u00fcrkiye ranks among Europe\u2019s leading countries in installed renewable energy capacity. The meeting reflects Ankara\u2019s continued commitment to deepening ties with European partners while advancing its long-standing EU membership goal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan has emphasised that ongoing geopolitical shifts have once again demonstrated the strategic importance…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3964,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[2503,3292,74,471,59,58,10],"class_list":["post-3963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-recep-tayyip-erdogan","tag-belgium","tag-customs","tag-erdogan","tag-eu","tag-president-of-turkiye","tag-recep-tayyip-erdogan","tag-turkiye"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/turkiye\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/turkiye\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/turkiye\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/turkiye\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/turkiye\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/turkiye\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/turkiye\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/turkiye\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/turkiye\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/turkiye\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}