Turkish FM to attend EU gathering as union debates track of ties

Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu will attend a European Union meeting in Malta on April 28 amid increasing tension between the bloc and Ankara due to the former's criticisms of the deterioration of rights in the problematic candidate country which have been fueled by a referendum that gave President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan sweeping new powers.

Çavuşoğlu will participate in the informal gathering of foreign ministers and candidate countries upon the invitation of Federica Mogherini, the EU's high representative of the union for foreign affairs, and George Vella, the foreign minister of Malta, which currently holds the EU presidency, the Foreign Ministry said April 27. 

The informal meeting format, also known as the "Gymnich meetings," gives an opportunity for an informal exchange of views on foreign policy developments, stated the Foreign Ministry. 

The EU foreign ministers gather in the morning on April 28 at which they will take stock of relations with Turkey. Çavuşoğlu will attend the afternoon session of the meeting in which candidate countries participate.  
 
The meeting comes after a critical Parliamentary Assembly of Council of Europe (PACE) decision to reintroduce a monitoring process for Turkey while degrading the country's democracy rating in a decision that could potentially jeopardize Turkey's European Union bid. 

In 2004, the EU ruled that Ankara must exit the monitoring process in order to meet the Copenhagen criteria. In the same year, the EU gave a date for the negotiations to start after Turkey's monitoring status was lifted.

Ankara's relations with Europe deteriorated sharply during the campaign ahead of the April 16 referendum, with Erdoğan accusing Germany and the Netherlands of "Nazi practices"...