DM Monitoring
ANKARA: Turkey and France are working on a road map to normalize ties and talks are going well, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said late Thursday, adding Ankara was ready to improve ties with its NATO ally if Paris showed the same willingness.
Speaking alongside his Portuguese counterpart Augusto Santos Silva in Lisbon, Çavuşoğlu said the current tensions between the NATO allies stemmed from Paris “categorically” opposing Ankara since Turkey’s 2019 cross-border anti-terror operation into northeast Syria against the PKK terror group’s Syrian branch, the YPG.
“Turkey is not categorically against France, but France has been against Turkey categorically since Operation Peace Spring,” Çavuşoğlu said.
“In the end, we had a very constructive phone conversation with my French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian and we agreed that we should work on a road map to normalize relations,” he said. “We have been working on an action plan, or road map, to normalize relations and it has been going well … If France is sincere, Turkey is ready to normalize ties with France as well,” Çavuşoğlu said. He added that relations with the 27-nation European Union as a whole would benefit from a “better atmosphere.”
Turkey has repeatedly traded barbs with France over policies in Syria, Libya, the Eastern Mediterranean and Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as over the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in France.
The spat has risen to new levels in recent months as France has moved to crack down on some Muslim groups after several attacks on its soil.
Ankara and Paris previously traded barbs after French officials in 2018 met with the leaders of the YPG.
The two countries are also on opposing sides in Libya, where Ankara backed the United Nations-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli against a 2019 offensive by putschist Gen. Khalifa Haftar. France is suspected of supporting Haftar, but officially insists it is neutral in the conflict.
Turkish officials have decried France’s interference in the Eastern Mediterranean dispute, given it has no territory in the region. France accused Turkish warships of aggressive behavior after its warship tried to inspect a vessel in June that it suspected was violating a U.N. arms embargo on Libya, but Turkey has denied harassing the Courbet.
The two countries’ dispute escalated further after France sent naval assets into the Eastern Mediterranean to support Greek warships shadowing Turkish ones in disputed waters.
