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EU/Turkey: Turkey withdraws support for EU military policy

01 July 2007

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Turkey has decided to withdraw its support for the EU military operations that it delivered since the beginning of the 2000s to achieve the Headline Goals 2010 targets. Sources said that General Yilmaz Oguz, the Turkish military representative to NATO had officially conveyed Turkey´s decision to the EU in May.

Turkey had earlier expressed its uneasiness over being excluded from decision-making and command mechanisms in the European military operations. Moreover Turkey's call to the EU to finalize the administrative arrangements for participation in the European Defence Agency was not met. Earlier, Norway signed a document to this end, but the signing of a similar document with Turkey was vetoed by Cyprus.

The Turkish move was confirmed by a representative of the Turkish Foreign Ministry, Tomur Bayer, at a conference on NATO and the European Security and Defence Policy: Forging New Links, held in Brussels on 8 June. However Bayer said that Turkey will continue to take part in an EU battlegroup.

Meanwhile, Turkish defence minister Vecdi Gonul has said that the special operations brigade which would join the EU military formations in 2010 was withdrawn after it was placed among the reserve units.

BBC Monitoring Europe - Political, 7.6.07; The New Anatolian, 13.6.07; Jane´s defence weekly, 20.6.07 (Nicholas Fiorenza)

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