Turkish FM urges EU to tighten border controls

Ankara, 29 January 2015 (MIA) - The European Union should tighten its border controls for people departing the Schengen Zone in order to stanch the flow of foreign fighters heading to Syria via Turkey, Turkey’s foreign minister has said.

“Everybody agrees on the need for intelligence sharing and better cooperation on foreign fighters. We have good cooperation with the U.S. and some EU countries. We maintain case-by-case cooperation with some countries, but with many others, we carry out regular intelligence sharing,” Mevlut Cavusoglu said in Krakow during events marking the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

Cavusoglu said he attended an anti-Islamic State of Syria and the Levant (ISIL) meeting in London on Jan. 22 where he shared his views about ineffective cooperation and the lack of strategy to stop the flow of foreign fighters to Syria.

However, intelligence sharing alone is not sufficient to stop the foreign fighters, he said, citing cases of foreign fighters who were deported by the Turkish government only to later appear at the Turkish border again.

“Checking passports and measures taken at their airports are not sufficient. We have good cooperation with the EU as an institution, but its institutional decisions are not enough. Member states should take additional measures,” he said.

EU countries part of the Schengen Agreement and non-EU countries where the Schengen Area is valid should re-regulate passport control policies, Cavusoglu said, noting that the exit and entry of every single traveler should be computerized, AFP reports. 

Meanwhile, the Turkish foreign minister said Ankara and Washington were in negotiations on the use of the strategic İncirlik Base as part of a deal to train and equip the moderate Syrian opposition. He urged Washington to finalize the agreement through accelerated political talks.

“Talks [with the U.S.] include [discussions about] how many members of the Syrian opposition will be trained, where they will be trained and how the consultations will be carried out. Plus, will it include İncirlik [base] or not? Is there a need to use İncirlik?” he said.

Turkey and the U.S. have been negotiating over the modalities of a train-and-equip program to be pledged to moderate Syrian opposition groups with the objective of creating an effective ground force, both against the Bashar al-Assad regime and ISIL.

There were expectations that the agreement would be finalized before the end of January, but Cavusoglu complained about the slow pace of the talks.

“Talks for the train-and-equip program are continuing. We told the Americans that talks should be held at a political level afterward because the soldiers [participating in the talks] continuously seek [political consent] on the decisions made. We told them the talks were not proceeding at the requested speed,” he said.

Instead of seeking political consent on every issue; it would be more effective to include political figures in the ongoing negotiations, the minister said, underlining that there were no problems concerning the content of the talks so far. Cavusoglu said he conveyed this message to Vice President Joe Biden, who said he would first seek President Barack Obama’s approval to include political figures in the talks.