Spain’s ‘enhancing ties with Turkey’ can only serve to strengthen Erdoğan’s oppressive rule | Ahval

Amid its ever-deepening foreign policy mess that has alienated the entire political establishment in Washington D.C, raised the tension in Eastern Mediterranean, and sanctions against it across the Atlantic, Turkey’s troubled government seems to have found a useful ally for its continuity: Spain. If the process of this rapprochement – which is a visible counter-dynamic […]

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Turkey And Spain: Bilateral Relations And Road Ahead For Customs Union Modernization – Eurasia Review

This paper analyses the bilateral relationship between Turkey and Spain, with a specific focus on the current state of economic relations. It aims to examine the Spanish position on the modernisation of the Customs Union (CU) agreement with Turkey. By Ilke Toygür* Spain has always been one of the supporters of Turkey’s accession to the EU.

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Russia-Turkey: Gas partnership as an answer to Western sanctions – Modern Diplomacy

The Russo-Ukrainian crisis, which started on 24 February 2022, brought war back to Europe. This war has visibly impacted the energy nerve of Europe as Russia is the primary exporter of energy, for – Liquified Natural Gas (LNG), oil and solid fossil fuel. Germany, in particular, had maintained a pro-longed diplomatic front in a bid

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Two-faced Turkey demands a terrible price for NATO expansion – Haaretz.com

Mr Erdogan will now expect Sweden and Finland to adhere to the spirit, and not just the (notably vague) letter, of the agreement. This means he will demand they back a future Turkish operation in Syria to combat the YPG, who happen to be the West’s main allies against Islamic State, support Ankara’s plans to expel and forcibly resettle over one million Syrian refugees in northern Syria, take concrete steps to extradite alleged members of the PKK and Gulen movement to face trial, unlikely to be fair, in Turkey, and keep schtum about Turkey’s poor human rights records and abuses of fundamental democratic freedoms.


Turkey will seize on any hemming and hawing on these issues as evidence of bad faith, if not betrayal, and a just cause to reignite a crisis in Turkey’s relations with the West. Turkey under Erdogan is a fundamentally untrustworthy ally. The NATO deal has triggered a countdown to the next noisy but inevitable conflagration.

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Turkey Is Now Suffering From Hyper-Inflation, According to Spanish Bank, BBVA | naked capitalism

The accounting rules apply retroactively from Jan 1 of the year in question. The impact on BBVA’s first quarter results will be reflected in the bank’s second quarter income statement. The official inflation rate in Turkey is currently above 70% and BBVA’s base-case scenario is that it will not fall below 60% at any point this year.

This is why BBVA has decided to apply hyperinflation accounting, which will wipe out €324 million from the bank’s P&L statement for the first quarter. Instead of providing €249 million in profits, BBVA Garanti will have generated €75 million in losses. Looking to the rest of the year, BBVA expects Garanti’s earnings in Turkey to be non-material to its overall performance, in light of the nation’s expected inflation. Despite taking a huge chunk out of BBVA’s profits, the adoption of IAS 29 does have a silver lining: it increases the bank’s Tier 1 capital ratio by 19bp to 12.89% in Q1 and raises its book value by €254 million.

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Turkey: Cocaine Hub Between Europe and the Middle East – Insight Crime

In 2022, cocaine shipments heading to Turkey have been seized in Ecuador, West Africa, and Malta, as well as in Turkey itself.

Though the vast majority of this cocaine simply transits through Turkey, a growing minority now stays in the country, according to a 2019 EMCDDA report. The country’s domestic market saw a record expansion between 2007 and 2017, with drug seizures increasing tenfold during this time.

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Turkey: persistently further from EU values and standards | European Parliament

“In the current challenging times, values and principles, which are at the core of any EU accession process, cannot come second to any geopolitical contingency. That is why the Parliament – and I hope all EU institutions – will not remain silent when faced with the current authoritarian spiral in the country. Instead of regaining trust – a much-needed asset in EU-Turkey relations – we are now losing it; the irresponsible veto in NATO and the rising tensions with EU member states are worrying signs for the future, marked by a pre-electoral situation in the country. If there is no change, I can hardly see the accession process surviving another five years”, said rapporteur Nacho Sánchez Amor (S&D, Spain).

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Greek FM: Turkey-Libya maritime MoU is both unlawful and illogical – 218 News

Dendias expressed his regret for the hostile approach and false allegations promoted by Ankara against his country, accusing the latter of ignoring the rights of Crete by signing the Memorandum of Understanding with Libya, saying   that its legal status is similar to Greece’s “assumed” signing of an “assumed” agreement with Spain that ignores Italy’s presence in the middle between the two countries.

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Cocaine Trafficking Case of Erdoğan Associate Appears to Be a Tactic to Deflect Pressure :: Middle East Forum

The arrest and release of a Turkish businessman close to the government on drug trafficking charges, only after an alert from German authorities, appears to follow classic stalling tactics often used by the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to deflect international criticism.

Time and again the Erdoğan government has “sandbagged” efforts to effectively investigate criminal conduct when the investigation incriminated or implicated senior government officials, members of the ruling Islamist elite or their associates.

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Germany’s New Government and Its Foreign Policy on Turkey: Lines of Conflict and Areas of Cooperation – Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik

In stark contrast to Germany’s Bundestag elections in 2017, Turkey has hardly been mentioned in this year’s election campaign. Nevertheless, today’s relatively relaxed atmosphere between Berlin and Ankara and the lack of prominence ascribed to their relationship in the German election campaign do not mean that shaping future foreign policy on Turkey will be an

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