NATO pledges further support to Turkey in Black Sea

At a press conference as part of the NATO Foreign Ministers meeting held on May 9-10, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg stressed the significance of the alliances' 360-degree approach and collective defense against threats stemming from the south and east. A senior official from NATO, who had spoken to Daily Sabah on the condition of anonymity, had said that since NATO has taken initiatives regarding the situation in the Black Sea, it has also been working on providing military training for Iraqi forces.

Speaking at a meeting of the chiefs of general staff of Balkan countries in Istanbul on May 11, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called on NATO to increase its presence. Erdoğan said: "We should enhance our coordination and cooperation in the Black Sea. We hope for concrete results from the NATO summit in Warsaw on July 8-9. … The Black Sea should be turned into the sea of stability. I told the NATO secretary-general that [NATI is] absent in the Black Sea and that is why it has nearly become a Russian lake. We should perform our duty, as we are the countries with access to the Black Sea. If we do not take action, history will not forgive us."

Responding to Daily Sabah's question regarding Erdoğan's remarks, Stoltenberg said NATO has already increased its presence in the Black Sea and added: "We have done that as part of our assurance measures, which we decided to implement after the illegal annexation of Crimea, which of course affects the whole security situation in the Black Sea. So, we have already increased our presence in the Black Sea and in the Black Sea region." Stoltenberg also said that NATO is "now considering together with our allies in the region, countries around the Black Sea, how we can do even more. ... So this is on our agenda, we have already implemented an increased presence and now we are looking into what more we can do." He told Daily Sabah that "enhancing the NATO presence in the region is becoming a need more and more each day." Providing details of the upcoming initiatives, he said two major factors are important, which include increasing security without interrupting stability in the region and increasing the NATO presence in the region by taking the Montreux Convention into consideration. Furthermore, increasing port visits, joint military exercises and Passex by NATO, which is an exercise between two navies to ensure that they are able to communicate and cooperate in times of war and humanitarian relief. He said that such deployment might not be at the highest level, but is enough to ensure the displaying of cooperation.

With the NATO Foreign Ministers meeting including discussions on further support for Iraq, prior to the meeting Stoltenberg told the media that "NATO has trained several hundred Iraqi officers in Jordan.

"We have received a request from Prime Minister [Haider] al-Abadi to expand our training mission into Iraq itself. And we will consider this request from Prime Minister al-Abadi." He said that the training of 350 Iraqi military personnel would be finalized in the upcoming period. Explaining that the training is conducted outside of Iraq, he said that NATO is looking into modalities to conduct the training in Iraq. Along with Iraq, NATO aims to continue its training, advising and assisting of Afghan security forces while planning to sustain them financially through 2020.