Speaker of Parliament Tsveta Karayancheva met with Speaker of the Grand National Assembly of the Republic of Turkey Ismail Kahraman at the 138th Inter-Parliamentary Union Assembly in Geneva.

Turkey is a neighbouring country to Bulgaria, an ally in NATO and a partner of priority to us in a number of areas, said the Speaker of Parliament. Among the areas of cooperation are migration and the fight against terrorism, energy, agriculture, animal husbandry and trade, she said. The stable and sustainable relations between us are based on the principles of good-neighbourliness and mutual respect, emphasised Tsveta Karayancheva.

The Speaker of Parliament said that Bulgaria highly appreciated Prime Minister Boyko Borissov’s visit to the Republic of Turkey in January 2018 and the opening of the refurbished Bulgarian church “St Stefan” in Istanbul. Thus Bulgaria and Turkey sent a positive message of religious tolerance, emphasised Tsveta Karayancheva.

She praised her Turkish colleague for Turkey’s efforts to tackle the migration flow and mentioned the positive effect of the EU-Turkey agreements on migration, which had effectively brought down the number of illegal migrants entering the EU. We attach special importance to the tripartite Bulgarian-Greek-Turkish Police and Customs Cooperation Centre, added Tsveta Karayancheva.

The Speaker of Parliament emphasised that there was a good level of cooperation between the parliaments of the two countries. It was mentioned that there was a significant potential for further development of the trade and economic relations.

Tsveta Karayancheva said that she expected important issues to be discussed at the summit in Varna between the leaders of EU institutions and Turkey.