Turkish FM voices support for Ukraine territorial integrity

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu has stressed that Turkey pays utmost importance to Ukraine’s territorial integrity and supports the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, during a meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart in Kiev.
Çavuşoğlu, who accompanied President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on his visit to Ukraine last weekend, met with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin, according to a Turkish Foreign Ministry statement issued on Monday. President Erdoğan attended the Turkey-Ukraine High Level Strategic Council’s 4th meeting in Kiev on Friday. Before this meeting, Çavuşoğlu met with Klimkin for a bilateral meeting.
During this meeting the two leaders talked about the current situation in Crimea and developments in eastern Ukraine; the Minsk protocol, which asks for a cease-fire between Ukraine and pro-Russian separatists; the situation of the Turkic community of Crimean Tatars; and cooperation between Turkey and Ukraine in international organizations, the Foreign Ministry said.
Çavuşoğlu pledged that Turkey’s support for the OSCE monitoring mission will continue. The OSCE Special Monitoring mission to Ukraine was deployed on March 21 of last year, following a request by Ukraine. The unarmed, civilian mission’s main task is to observe and report the situation in Ukraine in an impartial and objective way.