Azernews.Az

By Gunay Hasanova

Turkey will not change its anti-terrorism legislation, a condition put forth by the European Union for a visa-free travel to Europe.

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim announced about this at a joint press conference with the Head of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz on September 1, TRT World reported.

Schulz was in Ankara to mull the progress towards the abolition of visa regime for Turkish citizens and the accession of the country to the EU.

“We once again reiterated that we cannot make an adjustment to the anti-terror laws due to the circumstances that we face today," he said.

Yıldırım stated that the anti-terror law is a matter of Turkey’s security as the country is fighting against DAESH, PKK and FETÖ terrorist groups.

"Flexibility in anti-terror laws is out of the question. The EU should understand that Turkey’s fight against terror affects EU security as well," Yıldırım said.

Schulz, in turn, noted that Turkey and the EU have different anti-terrorism practices, and said there has been no progress towards the visa liberation deal due to these differences.

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"

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.

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.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz