Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau met with Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu in Warsaw to discuss the current migration crisis and Polish-Turkish relations.
Rau emphasized that economic relations between Poland and Turkey remained strong and trade exchange between the two countries had amounted to €6 billion in 2020. He hoped that this value would increase to €8 billion in 2021.
“Turkey is Poland’s most important economic partner in the Middle East,” he said and pointed to security, fighting terrorism, trade, migration, and tourism as areas of cooperation with Turkey.
Rau asked minister Mevlut Cavusoglu to pay more attention to the procedure connected to the current illegal migration crisis, which involves migrants traveling to the Belarusian capital of Minsk through different means and most often using transfer connections in Istanbul.
Rau announced that the Turkish foreign minister had offered versatile aid to Poland in face of the crisis. This help would come down to cooperation between Polish and Turkish intelligence, as well as sharing information and identification of areas of threat and migrant transfer channels.
Cavusoglu reaffirmed Turkey’s offer of assistance concerning the migration crisis, stating that Rau will be sent an invitation to Turkey for further consultation in this area.
“We are ready to undertake joint work against this problem and share experiences both with Poland and Lithuania,” said Cavusoglu.
The Turkish minister explained that fighting with smuggling networks was an incredibly important element of halting illegal immigration. He said that in the last nine months, Turkish Airlines had transferred 600 Iraqi citizens to Minsk and half of them had returned to Turkey.
Cavusoglu emphasized the importance of 600 years of relations between Poland and Turkey and thanked Polish firefighters for their help against wildfires this summer. He stated that Poland was Turkey’s strategic partner. Among other the aims of his visit, he also listed talks between delegations of Polish and Turkish companies.
