At Brussels’ Egmont Palace on 20 October 2026, seven Belgian and Turkish ministers relaunched a dormant high-level cooperation platform last convened a decade ago. Belgian Foreign Minister Maxime Prévot hailed Türkiye as an “indispensable NATO ally and migration partner,” underscoring Ankara’s gate-keeper role on the eastern flank of the EU. Counterparts Hakan Fidan (Foreign Affairs), Akin Gürlek (Justice) and Mustafa Ciftci (Interior) led the Turkish delegation. Talks produced a draft bilateral action plan on police cooperation aimed at faster intelligence-sharing on organised-crime and terrorism cases that straddle the two jurisdictions. Belgian Security and Home-Affairs Minister Bernard Quintin said the accord would enable joint investigative teams to tackle human-smuggling networks that funnel irregular migrants from the Aegean into Western Europe. Migration Minister Anneleen Van Bossuyt noted that Turkish authorities already host some 3.6 million refugees. “Effective European migration management starts well beyond the EU’s external borders,” she told reporters, confirming that Belgium will finance new capacity-building projects inside Türkiye’s border-management directorate. Brussels also floated visa-facilitation pilots for Turkish business travellers—conditional on sustained readmission cooperation—in a move welcomed by Belgium-based multinationals with supply-chain ties to Anatolia. Beyond migration, the ministers explored defence-industrial offsets, offshore wind investment and mutual recognition of e-identities. An annex to the joint communiqué sets up an annual “Mobility & Security Forum,” institutionalising dialogue that corporate mobility managers hope will streamline work-permit issuance for Turkish engineers assigned to Belgian R&D hubs. Observers view the restart as a litmus test for pragmatic EU-Türkiye engagement after years of strained relations. For global-mobility stakeholders, smoother police vetting and potential business-visa facilitation could shorten assignment lead-times and cut compliance costs.
Source: Anadolu Agency
