Turkey

Albanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on Wednesday that Albania-Turkey agreement, lifting visa requirements for natioanals of the two countries, enters into effect on Wednesday. Albanian foreign ministry said scrapping the visa obligations started on January 27th and now the citizens of both counters are entitled to visa-free travel.

Serbia has agreed to accept the appointment of a new ambassador from Bosnia, ending a three-year diplomatic impasse between the two countries, Bosnia’s foreign ministry has announced. The ministry said in a statement that Belgrade’s approval resulted from a series of trilateral meetings between the foreign ministers of Bosnia, Serbia …

Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat vowed on Friday (February 5th) to continue talks with Cypriot President Demetris Christofias on the reunification of the divided island. “Although we [Turkish Cypriots] have elections in April, I’m not going to stop the talks.

European Parliament will hold a plenary session on February 10th to debate the progress of Macedonia, Croatia and Turkey towards the European Union membership. European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee recently adopted the amendments to draft-resolution on Macedonia, urging the EU

The informal meeting of NATO defense ministers will begin in Istanbul, Turkey on Thursday. The informal meeting will focus exclusively on Afghanistan and Kosovo defense systems’ transformation.

The detailed planning of Nabucco will be carried out by five engineering companies from all countries participating in the project, Mr Reinhard Mitschek, Managing Director of Nabucco Gas Pipeline International GmbH, said.

We cannot miss saying that this is some long-awaited agreement. It is a result of the work of many governments since 2002 till now, MP Ramadan Atalay from the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) party said, commenting on the ratification of the Nabucco Agreement.

Bulgarian MPs passed the draft bill for ratification of the Agreement among Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Turkey on the construction of the Nabucco gas pipeline project. The draft bill on the ratification of the Nabucco Agreement has been passed with 156 votes.

Attempts to re-energise long running peace talks between leaders of ethnically-divided Cyprus do not seem to have produced the firm results Ban Ki-moon was after, but at least there appears to be goodwill on both sides. Flanked by Greek Cypriot President Demetrius Christofias and Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat, …

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has arrived in Cyprus on a mission to re-energise peace talks between the island’s estranged Greek and Turkish communities. Their leaders have been engaged in 17 months of open-ended negotiations which have achieved some movement on the key issue of power-sharing under a federal model, but …