Turkish top diplomat to attend Ukraine conference

ANKARA

Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan will attend a conference devoted to the recovery of Ukraine, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a written statement on June 20.

Fidan will attend the 2023 Ukraine Recovery Conference to be held on June 21-22, 2023, in London. It will be his first multilateral meeting after being appointed as the foreign minister.

“The 2023 Ukraine Recovery Conference, to be held jointly by the U.K. and Ukraine, is a continuation of the cycle of annual events, with the last one conducted jointly with Switzerland in Lugano. The Ukraine Recovery Conferences are dedicated to Ukraine’s development and reconstruction after the end of the war,” the statement read.

It also informed that Fidan will also hold bilateral meetings on the margins of the conference. There are reports about a potential meeting between Fidan and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, U.K. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly and others.

Fidan’s bilateral exchanges are expected to be focused on Sweden’s accession to NATO. Türkiye says Sweden must take more concrete actions in the fight against the PKK presence on its soil. The U.S. and other allies stress the importance of the Swedish accession to the alliance before NATO’s Vilnius Summit to take place in mid-July. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said he was planning to attend the summit.