ANKARA
Turkey supports the NATO membership bids of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro and Georgia, Turkish Parliament Speaker Cemil Cicek said Thursday.
Cicek made the remarks after meeting NATO Parliamentary Assembly President Michael Turner in Ankara.
He said that Turkey was following closely the events in Ukraine. He added that Turkey did not accept Russia’s annexation of Crimea, which was “in violation of the international law.”
Turner said that the NATO leadership had the same point of view as Turkey on the membership bids of the four countries and thanked Turkey for its stance on the Crimea issue and its services in Afghanistan.
Cicek also praised the role of the organization. “NATO is the most effective and efficient international institution for contributing to peace and security in the world,” he said.
The speaker also said that “a terror organization is a terror organization” and that it was not right to draw distinction between them.
He added that the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party or the PKK was a terror organization just like the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, al-Qaeda and Boko Haram.
Turkey, a NATO-member state since 1952, has repeatedly criticized the U.S.-led international coalition for arming the PKK-linked terror organizations in the fight against ISIL.
Turner highlighted Turkey’s importance in Asia, Europe and the Arab world as a Muslim country. “With the decreasing stability in the region, the strengthening of democratic institutions in Turkey is very important,” he said.
