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Ankara to host Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas
While in Ankara, Abbas will also meet with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu. Both Gül and Abbas were in Sharm al-Sheikh, Egypt, on Wednesday in order to attend a summit of the Non-Aligned Movement. As of Wednesday afternoon, though, it was not yet clear whether Abbas would travel to Ankara on board Gül's private plane as reported earlier.
Turkish media, citing news reports by the Greek Cypriot media, stated last week that Abbas and Greek Cypriot leader Dimitris Christofias mutually pledged support for each other's positions concerning international issues faced by their governments during the former's visit to the divided island.
Palestinian Ambassador Nabil Maarouf was summoned to the Foreign Ministry on Friday following news reports on the issue, which highlighted Abbas' support of the Greek Cypriot position on the Cyprus issue.
Ambassador Maarouf firmly denied the remarks attributed to Abbas when he was summoned to the Turkish Foreign Ministry upon the news reports.
“For us, the issue has been closed,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Burak Özügergin told reporters on Wednesday at a weekly press conference in response to a question over whether Maarouf's rejection of those remarks had been satisfactory for Ankara.
Maarouf's statement was clear and direct and doesn't allow any uncertainty on the issue, Özügergin said.
“Taking our relationship with the Palestinian people into consideration, we didn't heed the related news reports when they were first spread. But the ambassador's statement confirming that Mr. Abbas didn't use such expressions has been useful to correctly inform the public,” he added.
“I wish to warmly thank President Abbas and the Palestinian Authority for their firm and consistent stance in supporting the struggle of the Cypriot people and the positions of the Republic of Cyprus both within the Organization of the Islamic Conference [OIC] and in the Arab world in general, as well as internationally,” Christofias had said in a written statement posted on his official Web site following talks with Abbas last Thursday.
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