Foreign Minister Çavuşoğlu meets with key EP committee chair

Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu on Monday met with David McAllister, chair of the EU Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, and a committee delegation in the capital Ankara.
"Met with President David McAllister and (committee) delegation," Çavuşoğlu said on Twitter.
"Thinking that in the upcoming period we could establish a sincere and positive relation with the EU on the basis of a fair approach and EP should play a key role in this regard."
McAllister also posted on Twitter, saying: "I am chairing a delegation of the @EP_ForeignAff to Ankara and Mardin (Turkey) for meetings with government representatives, including Foreign Affairs Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, parliamentarians, academics and civil society representatives."

On Monday evening, Defense Minister Hulusi Akar spoke on the phone with British Secretary of State for Defense Ben Wallace to discuss the issue of the embattled northwestern Syrian province of Idlib.

A 50-vehicle Turkish military convoy entered Idlib province on Monday morning. Later in the day, the Syrian National Army (SNA) recaptured the strategic town of Nayrab near Saraqib, which was initially captured by the Assad regime forces on Feb. 3.

Idlib province is home to some 3 million people, many of them displaced from other parts of Syria in earlier bouts of violence. The U.N. has estimated that 390,000 Syrians have been displaced there over the past two months – 315,000 in December and 75,000 in January.
Turkey already hosts 3.5 million Syrian refugees, and the current wave of violence in Idlib has raised concerns about a new surge in displaced civilians fleeing toward the Turkish border.