Turkey, US Agree to Act Together in Egyptian Upheaval

With continuing unrest in Egypt, United States President Barack Obama called Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan early Sunday to discuss ways of working together to prevent the entire Middle East from falling into deep instability.

“[Turkey and the U.S.] have agreed on the necessity of meeting the legitimate and democratic rights of the people in the region [of the Middle East],” read a statement issued by the Office of the Prime Minister Sunday.

According to the statement, Obama and Erdogan urged leaders of regional countries not to use force against their people. “These incidents should not bring about deep and ingrained instability. [Turkey and the U.S.] have shared concerns that instability could cause detrimental consequences in the region,” it said.

The statement said Obama made the call because he valued how Erdogan, the winner of successive elections in successfully democratic Turkey, was evaluating the developments. The statement said the two leaders agreed to stay in close contact in order to properly evaluate developments.

The short statement highlighted a number of points where the two nations’ positions bore similarities. The first point was that both Ankara and Washington saw peoples’ revolts in the region as legitimate and that their democratic demands should be met. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, who is set to meet his U.S. counterpart Hillary Clinton next week in Turkey, confirmed Turkey’s position in a statement Friday.

The second important intersection between the two countries was that neither side desired to see already fragile stability being hurt by further upheavals. Turkish and U.S. cooperation in limiting the spread of the negative affects of regional upheavals is expected to bring the two allies closer in the near future, especially following Clinton’s forthcoming visit to Ankara.


Source : Hurriyet Daily News