Taliban

The European Union must work with Turkey for the stability of the region and beyond, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said on Sept. 23 after meeting a senior EU official.

The top diplomat met with Josep Borrell, the EU high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, on the sidelines of the 76th session of the U.N. General Assembly in New York.

Central European leaders signed a joint declaration on Thursday saying immigration should not be the answer to the European Union's declining birth rate, while calling on the bloc to keep family policy under national jurisdiction, Reuters reports.

The top U.S. military officers from United States and Russia held six hours of talks in Helsinki on Wednesday, in the first face-to-face meeting between them since 2019 as both nations adjust to the U.S. pullout and Taliban takeover in Afghanistan.

The international community should continue to engage with Afghanistan, Turkey's foreign minister said on Sept. 22. 

Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and his counterparts exchanged opinions on irregular migration and the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan as part of a virtual G20 foreign ministers meeting hosted by the Italian chair of the intergovernmental forum.

After two decades in Afghanistan, the United States should do more to help the country's refugees, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in remarks aired on Sept. 22. 

Turkey hosts the world's largest refugee population - some 4 million, mostly Syrians - and has warned that it cannot accept any more arrivals from Afghanistan.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Russian President Vladimir Putin are expected to meet in Sochi on Sept. 29 to discuss the recent regional developments and bilateral relations.

Ahead of a one-on-one meeting on Sept. 21 on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, the U.S. and Turkey's top diplomats said they would continue to work on Afghanistan.

New York – Slovenian Foreign Minister Anže Logar urged his EU peers to stick with the agreement the ministers reached an an informal meeting in Slovenia in September regarding Afghanistan, as EU foreign ministers held a meeting on the margins of the UN General Assembly on Monday.

The European Union will focus on humanitarian aid as it figures out how to deal with the Taliban, aiming on an informal arrangement with Afghanistan's new rulers to ensure safe aid corridors, four diplomats and two officials said.

The Pentagon retreated from its defense of a drone strike that killed multiple civilians in Afghanistan last month, announcing on Sept. 17 that a review revealed that only civilians were killed in the attack, not an Islamic State extremist as first believed.

"The strike was a tragic mistake," Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, told a Pentagon news conference.