Dutch Foreign Minister Set for Türkiye Visit

(MENAFN) Dutch Foreign Minister Tom Berendsen is set to make his inaugural working visit to Türkiye on Thursday since assuming his ministerial role, in a diplomatically significant trip that places a renewed spotlight on bilateral ties between two longstanding NATO allies, according to diplomatic sources.

At the heart of the visit, Berendsen is scheduled to hold face-to-face talks with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, with discussions expected to span a broad and consequential agenda ranging from trade and security to regional conflict resolution.

Fidan is anticipated to champion the deepening of bilateral cooperation through established institutional frameworks, particularly the "Türkiye-Netherlands Conference" — widely known as the Wittenburg Conference — a platform launched in 2008 and co-chaired by the two nations' respective foreign ministers. The upcoming 11th edition of the conference, slated to be held in Türkiye, is expected to inject fresh momentum into the partnership.

On the economic front, both ministers will train their focus on elevating bilateral trade, with a shared ambition of pushing the trade volume to a landmark $20 billion target — a figure that would represent a significant leap from the $13.3 billion recorded in 2025, which comprised $8.1 billion in exports and $5.2 billion in imports. The Netherlands remains Türkiye's foremost source of foreign direct investment, which reached $33 billion in 2025, while Turkish investments flowing into the Netherlands surpassed $21 billion over the same period.

Fidan is also expected to press for a strategically grounded reassessment of Türkiye-EU relations, specifically advocating for tangible progress on modernizing the Customs Union, advancing visa liberalization, and ensuring that emerging European security frameworks are developed within the NATO architecture and coordinated transparently across all allied members.

The welfare and social integration of Türkiye's sizeable diaspora in the Netherlands — a community numbering approximately 500,000 people of Turkish origin — will also feature on the agenda, reflecting Ankara's longstanding commitment to its citizens abroad and recognizing the community's role as a vital human bridge between the two countries.

On pressing geopolitical matters, Fidan is expected to brief his Dutch counterpart on Ankara's active diplomatic efforts to contain and resolve the escalating conflicts triggered by Israeli and US military operations against Iran, stressing Türkiye's drive to bring hostilities to an end as swiftly as possible while flagging the destabilizing threat posed by Iranian strikes on third-party nations.

Fidan is further anticipated to deliver a firm message that Israel's continued unlawful conduct in occupied Palestinian territories, its intensified military campaigns in Lebanon, and its provocations at revered holy sites in East Jerusalem — most notably Al-Aqsa Mosque — are wholly unacceptable and constitute a mounting threat to the region's fragile stability.

Ankara's unwavering support for diplomatic pathways toward ending the Russia-Ukraine war will also be reaffirmed, alongside a call for international actors to refrain from entanglement in regional conflicts as Syria navigates its critical reconstruction phase.

The visit builds on a foundation of high-level engagement between the two nations. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan last met with then-Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof on the sidelines of the NATO Summit on June 25, 2025, while Minister Fidan previously traveled to the Netherlands on April 19, 2024, to participate in the 10th Wittenburg Conference. The most recent Türkiye-Netherlands Joint Economic and Trade Committee (JETCO) meeting convened in Istanbul on January 15, 2025, laying additional groundwork for expanded economic collaboration.

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