Foreign Ministry

Deputy Foreign Minister Naci Koru on June 27 met with families of the Turkish consulate personnel who were taken hostage by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Koru on June 26 met with the families of the 31 Turkish drivers who were kidnapped in Mosul.

Bulgaria has answered back to comments EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fuele made in a recent interview.

Fuele told EurActiv the accession of Bulgaria and Romania into the EU put the bloc's credibility into question.

“Nothing has worked since Dec. 17 [2013]. We just cannot have anything moving,” a business friend of mine told me, complaining about the ministry reshuffles, which were part of the government’s plan to “clear the state” from the parallel state, meaning those known to be followers/sympathizers or opportunists who tried to act close with the Fetullah Gülen movement.

BELGRADE - Serbian First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Ivica Dacic and Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications Rasim Ljajic met on Wednesday to discuss further liberalization of the visa regime that would help attract foreign investors and tourists to Serbia.

One of the recent irritating tendencies is that the restrictions imposed on the freedom of the press through court orders have spread to grave extent, somehow adopting a systematic characteristic.

Some 250 Turkish citizens are leaving Libya, after a call from a renegade Libyan general to Turks and Qataris to leave the country’s east within two days or suffer a backlash from the public.

Most Turkish nationals have left the country since the Foreign Ministry issued its own warning, Anadolu Agency quoted Turkey’s Benghazi Council General Ali Sait Akın as saying on June 23.

A long-awaited decree reshuffling the Foreign Ministry’s key diplomats has been finalized with appointments to crucial posts like Moscow, Tehran, Rome and Madrid. One of the most important reshuffles is the appointment of deputy undersecretary Ömer Önhon, who was responsible for the Middle East, particularly Syria, to Madrid as Turkey’s ambassador.

In the next few weeks Montenegro will submit a formal request procedure to gain "permanent guest status" in the organisation.  

The government’s attempt to exempt spending for the 2015 G-20 summit from regular public procurement procedures has prompted a debate at Parliament over the cost of the plans The government has moved to exempt spending on the G-20 summit, which will be hosted by Turkey in 2015, from regular public procurement procedures, sparking reactions from the opposition.

The Romanian Government, with the direct involvement of the Department for emergency interventions coordinated by Raed Arafat, has decided to set up a working group for urgent management of the situation of Romanian nationals stuck in the Bulgarian spa town of Albena because of the floods that hit Bulgaria over the past days.