Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan confirmed his willingness in a telephone call on Saturday to help Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti in talks with Serbian President Aleksander Vučić over the normalisation of relations.
Kosovo has good relations with Turkey, and Erdogan has often expressed his support for the country’s sovereignty as well as offering to mediate in discussions with Serbia.
“There was also talk about the last meeting in Brussels for the normalisation of relations between Kosovo and Serbia, for which President Erdogan welcomed the result achieved, expressing his support to Prime Minister Kurti and his willingness to help,” a Kosovo government statement noted.
The meeting between Kurti, Vučić and European Union stakeholders last week ended with positive signals from Kosovo and the EU, while Vučić quickly backtracked on a reported verbal agreement to the EU proposal when he addressed a domestic audience.
In January, Erdogan said he is committed to easing tensions between the two countries in what appears to be part of a bid to position himself as a key mediator in various geopolitical situations, including Kosovo-Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“We continued our efforts to resolve the political deadlock in Bosnia and Herzegovina and to ease the tension in the relations between Kosovo and Serbia”, he said following a government meeting earlier this year.
In September 2022, Erdogan spoke of his support for Kosovo and Serbia in overcoming their challenges and hoped for a durable solution to the ongoing tensions. In May 2022, he also voiced support for Kosovo joining NATO following a meeting with President Vjosa Osmani.
“Turkey, as an important NATO country, sees nothing wrong with Kosovo’s membership in NATO. We do not need anyone’s permission to support the NATO membership process,” he said at the time.
“We have taken steps. As we did in the case of recognition, so we will do for the process of Kosovo’s membership in NATO,” he added back then.
Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008 following the bloody 1998-1999 war, which saw 1.4 million ethnic Albanians displaced and was ended by a NATO-led bomb campaign against Belgrade forces. Despite over a decade of EU and US-facilitated talks, relations remain strained, and Serbia refuses to recognise Kosovo as an independent country.
During November and December, the situation erupted into minor conflicts between ethnic Serbs in the north of Kosovo and Pristina authorities. This included attacks on central electoral commission sites, protests, and blocking arterial roads and border crossing points.
The situation was defused through EU and US diplomacy and the work of KFOR, the NATO-led peacekeeping force stationed in the country since the end of the war.
Kosovo applied for EU membership at the end of 2022, but with five EU member states not recognising Kosovo, the road to membership is expected to be long and full of obstacles.
On the topic of the 6 February earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria, killing over 52,000 people, Kurti expressed his condolences to Erdogan and the Turkish people.
(Alice Taylor | Exit.al)
Source: euractiv.com
