Erdogan and Orbán show solidarity | EUROtoday

ITurkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was welcomed to Budapest on Monday for the second time this yr. The purpose for the go to was the hundredth anniversary of the institution of diplomatic relations: On December 18, 1923, the newly fashioned nation states of Turkey and Hungary after the First World War concluded a friendship treaty in Istanbul.

But it was additionally a possibility for the political leaders of each international locations, Erdoğan and Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, to show their mutual solidarity. Orbán gave Erdogan a stallion from a Hungarian stud farm “from horse nation to horse nation,” and in return he obtained a Turkish electrical automobile.

In the Atlantic protection alliance, it’s Ankara and Budapest which might be delaying Sweden’s accession to NATO. Although each have expressed their elementary willingness to conform to the northern European nation’s accession, they’ve been stalling their allies for a yr and a half. Most lately, Erdoğan made ratification of Sweden’s accession to NATO depending on the receipt of American F-16 fighter jets. Orbán clearly doesn’t need to depart Erdoğan, whom he sees as a detailed worldwide companion, alone on this challenge.

Conversely, Orbán may use the sign that he’s not utterly remoted. At the EU summit in Brussels final week, he was the one one who didn’t need to vote in favor of beginning accession negotiations with Ukraine and left the room when it was voted on. He vetoed the discharge of monetary sources for Ukraine. There have been calls from Orbán’s former European occasion household, the EPP, to strip Hungary of its voting rights within the EU.

Orbán praised Turkey for the grain settlement

Erdoğan was obtained with army honors in Budapest and first met with President Katalin Novák. He laid a wreath at a memorial stone for fallen Hungarian troopers within the First World War. His dialog with Orbán targeted totally on financial relations. The buying and selling quantity needs to be nearly doubled to 6 billion {dollars}.

Agreements on, amongst different issues, infrastructure and vitality provide through the Turk Stream fuel pipeline had been signed. Erdogan mentioned they mentioned EU points and developments in Gaza. Orbán referred to migration, which can’t be contained with out Turkey. And solely Turkey made progress in the direction of peace within the Ukraine-Russia struggle, specifically on the grain challenge.

The program additionally included Orbán and Erdoğan’s joint participation in a gathering of the “Hungarian-Turkish High-Level Strategic Cooperation Council”. This is a committee that the 2 of them arrange ten years in the past to take care of subjects such because the economic system, the surroundings and vitality, tradition and schooling. In August of this yr, Erdoğan traveled to Budapest for the World Athletics Championships; in line with him, this was the twenty first time he and Orbán met.