Source: Reuters
By Souhail Karam
RIYADH, Feb 2 (Reuters) - Turkish President Abdullah Gul can expect a warm welcome when he starts an official visit to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday with the stated goal of boosting business ties with the world's largest oil exporter.
Saudi Arabia hopes the visit will bring it closer to forming a strategic alliance with the NATO member state to counter the growing influence of Iran in the region, diplomats say.
Bilateral ties have improved dramatically since Gul's AK Party and King Abdullah came to power in 2002 and 2005 respectively.
Saudi Arabia's ultra-conservative Sunni Muslim rulers were for decades wary of the avowedly secular Turkish state -- having helped to evict the Ottomans from the Arabian peninsula in the early years of the 20th century.
But the Saudi economy has more recently provided work for thousands of Turks, including Gul himself, whose daughter was born in the Saudi city of Jeddah.
Diplomats say that rising Shi'ite influence in the region, foremost from Iran, is now bringing a further rapprochement.
"Saudi leaders see in Turkey a strong ally to counter Iran's growing influence in the region. They don't mind giving Turkey the means that will enable it to supersede both their own influence and that of Iran," said one Western diplomat.
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan won Turkey millions of fans in the Arab world last week by haranguing Israel's President Shimon Peres at an international forum last week over its recent assault on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
STRIKING A CHORD
Erdogan's outburst struck a chord among many Arabs, who found many of their own leaders not only unable to stop Israel's offensive, in which more than 1,300 Palestinians were killed, but also reluctant to take a stand against it.
King Abdullah has pledged a $1 billion donation to help rebuild Gaza. But it is not clear how these funds will be channelled to the population, given the divisions in the Palestinian leadership and Saudi Arabia's manifest unease in dealing with the Hamas movement, which has close ties with Iran.
Turkish diplomats said the monarch wanted to discuss Gaza with Gul, as well as Iran's growing influence in the region.
"We are friends with both (Iran and Saudi Arabia) ... But for us the visit is mainly for business," a Turkish diplomat said on condition of anonymity.
Turkey hopes that bilateral trade with Saudi Arabia, which has already risen to about $5 billion in 2008 from less than $2 billion in 2006, to around $15 billion by the end of 2013, the diplomat said.
Some 150 Turkish businessmen will be accompanying Gul in the hope of winning infrastructure and industrial contracts.
In remarks published on Monday by Saudi newspapers, Gul suggested that Iran would not have gained so much influence if Arab states had not left a vacuum on issues affecting the Middle East, such as Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.
"As a Muslim nation, Iran is entitled to have aspirations and it likes to defend Islamic issues, but Palestine is Arab and there is Sunnism in Palestine, so it is up to Palestinians and Arabs to initiate ... a solution for these issues,"Gul said. (Editing by Thomas Atkins and Kevin Liffey)
No comments:
Post a Comment