Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen will meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the upcoming UN General Assembly in New York. According to the president’s office, the meeting is scheduled for Wednesday afternoon (local time) at UN headquarters. Bilaterally, the mood between Austria and Turkey was frosty for a long time. At the end of June, there was a meeting between Erdogan and Chancellor Karl Nehammer (ÖVP) in Madrid, where the thaw was announced.
“We want to continue on the path of rapprochement and constructive dialogue that we have started,” Nehammer said after the exchange of views with Erdogan on the sidelines of the NATO summit. Turkey is also an important partner when it comes to security issues and migration, the chancellor said, also mentioning the “millions of refugees currently in Turkey”. Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg (ÖVP) had met his counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu several times in recent months. At a meeting in Ankara in early July, Cavusoglu even spoke about his “friend Alexander” at a press conference.
Reorganized relations with Turkey
As of 2014, the Turkish president had become the unofficial favorite opponent of Sebastian Kurz, who railed against Erdogan first as foreign minister and later as chancellor. Led by the ÖVP politician, Austrian politicians denounced the dismantling of democracy and the rule of law in Turkey under Erdogan, as well as his influence on the Turkish diaspora in Austria and his alleged attempts to blackmail the EU with migrants.
President, Chancellor and Minister of Foreign Affairs at the UN General Assembly
These tones should now be a thing of the past. The trio of Van der Bellen, Nehammer and Schallenberg will be guests at the UN General Assembly next week. Numerous bilateral and multilateral events are planned.
Source: Krone
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