Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan today embarked on a visit to Saudi Arabia to enhance relations with the Gulf kingdom.
Erdogan will be welcomed by Saudi King Salman Bin Abdulaziz with an official ceremony in Jeddah city.
They will hold one-on-one talks, followed by inter-delegation meetings.
Bilateral relations, regional and international issues will be on the agenda.
After Saudi Arabia, Erdogan will visit Qatar and the UAE to further enhance existing cooperation in various sectors, particularly the economy and investment.
During his visit to the three Gulf nations, Erdogan said he wants to boost ties and finalise investment deals.
The visit comes as Turks are hit with sales and fuel tax hikes that Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek has said are necessary to restore fiscal discipline and bring inflation down.
The official annual inflation rate stood at 38% last month, down from a high of 85% in October. Independent economists, however, maintain that the actual rate was around 108% in June.
Turkey’s current account deficit reached record levels this year – $37.7 billion in the first five months — and Erdogan is hoping the oil- and gas-rich Gulf states will help plug the gap.
Last month the Turkish central bank delivered a large interest rate hike, signaling a shift toward more conventional economic policies following criticism that Erdogan’s low-rate approach had made a cost-of-living crisis worse.
His Gulf tour was preceded by Turkish officials including Simsek, Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz and central bank Governor Hafize Gaye Erkan holding talks in all three countries.
Ankara has recently repaired ties with Saudi Arabia and the UAE following a decade-long rift. The split arose following the 2011 Arab Spring and Turkey’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood, considered a threat by some Gulf monarchies.
Ankara and Riyadh have only recently restablished ties which had been severed as a result of their support for opposing sides in the 2017 Saudi boycott of Qatar. In 2020, Riyadh imposed a silent and unofficial boycott of Ankara, preventing trucks holding Turkish goods from entering the kingdom, forcing Saudi businesses to cut off their trade with Turkiye and pressuring businessmen to end their investments in the country. This came to an end in June 2022.
