CHP head meets with top EU politicians

BERN

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Republican People’s Party (CHP) head Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has started a five-day European tour during which he is scheduled to meet top European politicians and Turks living in Europe, as part of his party’s election campaign.

Kılıçdaroğlu kick-started his tour of Europe in the Swiss capital Bern, where he met with Turkish citizens and then headed to France’s Strasbourg, where he was scheduled to meet with Thorbjorn Jagland, the secretary general of the Council of Europe (CoE), and Nils Muiznieks, the CoE’s commissioner for human rights.

CHP deputy chair Tekin Bingöl announced in a written statement released on Sept. 22 that Kılıçdaroğlu would explain to important figures in EU politics that ending the tragedy that refugees, most of whom are Syrians, have been experiencing was a humanitarian obligation, adding that a joint strategy between Turkey and EU countries could be developed to ameliorate the situation.

In Brussels, the CHP leader will deliver a speech at the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (FEPS) and conducts talks with the European Parliament’s rapporteur for Turkey, Kati Piri, European Parliament President Martin Schulz and the president of the Greens-European Free Alliance at the European Parliament, Rebecca Harms, all on Sept. 24. 

Kılıçdaroğlu is set to hold a press meeting on Sept. 24 at the CHP’s EU office in Brussels.

He will hold talks with Thorsten Schaefer-Gümbel, a key figure of the Social Democrat Party (SPD), a junior partner in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s grand coalition, in Frankfurt on Sept. 25.

All told, the CHP head will meet with Turkish citizens in 10 cities in six different EU countries. Among these meetings in Germany, Kılıçdaroğlu will meet with Turkish citizens in Cologne, Frankfurt, Mannheim, Stuttgart and Munich. 

He is set to lastly go to Vienna to meet national parliament head Doris Bures on Sept. 27 and Social and Consumers’ Protection Minister Rudolf Hundstorfer.