{"id":490663,"date":"2025-10-11T09:41:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-11T09:41:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/490663\/"},"modified":"2025-10-11T09:41:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-11T09:41:11","slug":"eu-wants-turkey-to-be-part-of-safe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/490663\/","title":{"rendered":"EU wants Turkey to be part of SAFE"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>                            <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"960\" height=\"600\" class=\"picture-main-block-image\" data-nxsrc=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/AP_Wadephul.jpg\" alt=\"EU wants Turkey to be part of SAFE\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/AP_Wadephul.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul is seen in a September 30, 2025, file photo. [AP]<\/p>\n<p>German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul, who is visiting Greece on Monday, is expected to renew pressure on the government to drop its objections regarding Turkey\u2019s participation in the European Union\u2019s \u20ac150 billion Security Action for Europe (SAFE) program designed to boost investment in defense industries.<\/p>\n<p>The ratcheting up of pressure is also due to the fact that the deadline (November 30) for countries wishing to receive loans through SAFE is approaching.<\/p>\n<p>A few days ago, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis met on the sidelines of the European Political Community (EPC) Summit in Copenhagen with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, as well as NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, who had requested the meeting with the central issue on the agenda being the unblocking of Turkey\u2019s participation in SAFE.<\/p>\n<p>Mitsotakis repeated Greece\u2019s points, that Turkey cannot join SAFE unless it drops its threat of war if Greece were to extend its territorial waters in the Aegean and its theory of the \u201cgray zones,\u201d on the basis of which Ankara disputes Greek sovereignty over islands and islets in the Aegean.<\/p>\n<p>But, among EU members, only Cyprus and France share Greece\u2019s objections, even though many understand Greece\u2019s stance.<\/p>\n<p>Practically all the other EU countries support cooperation with Turkey, as they consider the state with the second largest army in NATO and a flourishing defense industry to be a useful partner for Europe.<\/p>\n<p>The assessments of quite a few Europeans \u2013 mainly Easterners \u2013 that Turkey\u2019s stance on Ukraine and its good cooperation with Russia could be ambivalent have been conveyed to Athens in various ways, but they believe that at this stage, Europe needs both the industrial capabilities of the Turks and their willingness to get involved in active operations if required.<\/p>\n<p>Also, Greece\u2019s reluctance to provide its aging Mirage 2000-5 fighters to other EU countries so that they, in turn, can provide Ukraine with these or other planes does not sit well with Eastern Europeans and other EU members.<\/p>\n<p>Scandinavian countries are also positive about Turkey and SAFE, even though two (Finland, and, especially, Sweden) recently became the target of Turkish obstructionism when they applied to join NATO.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul is seen in a September 30, 2025, file photo. [AP] German Foreign Minister&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":490664,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[473,2000,299,5187,12072,285,461],"class_list":{"0":"post-490663","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-defense","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-european","12":"tag-foreign-affairs","13":"tag-politics","14":"tag-turkey"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115354881318922574","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/490664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}