19 February 2019•Update: 20 February 2019
By Andac Hongur and Gulsum Incekaya
ISTANBUL
Turkey’s interior minister met separately Tuesday with his Croatian counterpart and the EU commissioner for migration as a part of 6th Ministerial Conference of the Budapest Process on migration.
Meeting at Istanbul’s Ciragan Palace, Turkey’s Suleyman Soylu and Croatia’s Davor Bozinovic discussed cooperation in the fight against terrorism and managing migration and spoke of forming a joint commission to deal with such issues.
Soylu also held a closed-door meeting with European Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos.
Saying that he finds Budapest Process very valuable, Soylu also highlighted the importance of effectively sustaining Turkey-EU cooperation on international platforms as partners with shared problems and overlapping interests in managing migration flows.
At their meeting, Soylu and Avramopoulos also discussed the issue of Syrian refugees and combating illegal migration.
The Budapest Process -- a consultative forum on comprehensive and sustainable systems for regular migration -- has been chaired by Turkey since 2006.
