Eurasia Press & News
French President François Hollande’s long-awaited visit to Turkey will take place on Jan. 27-28.
Hollande, whose election in 2012 was welcomed by Ankara due to his softer tone on the Turkish bid to join the European Union, has long been expected to visit Turkey. The decision to finalize plans came after Turkey and Japan signed a finalized deal during a visit by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to Ankara late last month for the construction of a nuclear power plant by a Japanese-French consortium on Turkey’s Black Sea coast.
Hollande was elected the French president in May of 2012, defeating his predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy who remained a steadfast opponent of Turkish membership in the EU during his term in office. During Sarkozy’s term, France had blocked accession talks between Turkey and the EU on five negotiation chapters which it said are directly related to accession.
Hollande, on the other hand, has softened the French stance, lifting Paris’ objection to the opening of talks on one of the five blocked chapters. The EU and Turkey formally opened talks on Chapter 22 on regional policies on Tuesday in Brussels, months after the lifting of the French objection. It was the first time that the two sides had opened talks on one of the 35 negotiation chapters in three years.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan invited Hollande to visit Turkey when the two met on the sidelines of a summit of G-20 group of countries in Mexico in 2012, lamenting that no French head of the state has visited Turkey in the past two decades. Hollande welcomed the invitation but officials from the two countries failed to set a date for Hollande’s visit up until now.
