Azernews.Az

By Gunay Hasanova

The Chairman of the European Parliament (EP), Martin Schulz, will visit Ankara on September 1.

He will hold talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and discuss the relationship between the EU and Turkey, RIA Novosti reported.

"I will visit Ankara on Thursday to meet with President Erdogan, to discuss relations between the EU and Turkey and hereby to confirm the European Union’s support for democracy and democratic values in Turkey”, wrote Schultz in his official microblog on Twitter.

At the moment, the EU delegation in Ankara discusses progress towards the abolition of visa regime for Turkish citizens and the accession of the country to the EU.

Previously, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that if the European Union doesn’t cancel visa regime with Turkey in mid-October, Ankara won’t be able to receive illegal migrants from the EU, adding that the EU still has not paid $3 billion allocated for maintenance of refugees.

The Heads of State and the EU Member States' governments agreed with Turkey upon a joint plan to combat the migration crisis in mid-March. The program is focusing on the return of illegal immigrants arriving from Greece to the territory of Turkey and accepting legal Syrian refugees in Turkey by the EU based principle of "one for one"

Currently, there are more than two million Syrian refugees in the territory of Turkey. Approximately 300,000 of them live in the camps and the rest are scattered over the Turkish provinces. Only Istanbul is host to 40,000 refugees from Syria.

Turkey has along waited for its EU membership, while each application to accede to the European Union was frustrating for the government. Turkey, holding a status of an associate member at the Economic Community -- the predecessor of the EU since 1963 -- made an official application for entry on April 14, 1987.

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