Physical Address
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President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on late Thursday arrived from Albania in the Serbian capital Belgrade for the second stage of his Balkan tour.
At Belgrade’s Nikola Tesla Airport, Erdoğan was welcomed by Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic.
Ahead of Erdoğan’s visit, Belgrade’s streets were decorated with Turkish and Serbian flags, especially the route Erdoğan will use during his visit to Serbia.
Many buildings in the center of Belgrade are covered with large Turkish flags, and on the Serbian Palace, where he will be officially welcomed by Vucic on Friday.
Erdoğan’s visit to Serbia is expected to include a comprehensive review of bilateral relations.
Following official talks, Erdoğan on Friday will attend a business forum, with both countries’ leaders set to address the gathering.
Various agreements are also planned to be signed to enhance the legal framework of bilateral relations due to the visits.
In addition, meetings are expected to cover current global and regional issues, including developments in the Balkans as well as Israel’s attacks on Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territories and Lebanon.
Türkiye made a major political comeback in Serbia in 2017 when Erdoğan made a landmark visit to Belgrade.
At the time, Erdoğan and Vucic mended ties between their countries.
Five centuries of the Ottoman presence in Serbia have weighed heavily on relations between Belgrade and Ankara.
Another source of tension has been the cultural and historical ties between Türkiye and Serbia’s former breakaway province of Kosovo. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, a move Belgrade still refuses to recognize.
The 2017 visit nevertheless repaired Türkiye’s relationship with Serbia, Belgrade-based analyst Vuk Vuksanovic told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Since then, “The Balkans is quite a success story for Türkiye.”
Occasionally, the ties between Türkiye and Serbia were frosty, including when Ankara last year sold drones to Kosovo, sparking anger in Belgrade that deemed the move “unacceptable.”
But the row could be resolved with a new cooperation agreement, estimated Vuksanovic.
“I would not be surprised if we see a military deal at the end of this visit,” Vuksanovic said.
He expected the talks in Belgrade to focus on “military cooperation, the position of Turkish business companies and attempts by Belgrade to persuade Ankara to tone down support for Kosovo.”
Erdoğan is expected to address the efforts to de-escalate the tensions between Kosovo and Serbia, which have prevailed despite efforts for normalization by actors in their wider region to turn down the heat.
The two Western Balkan countries have always been at odds as Belgrade refused to recognize Pristina’s independence from it in 2008 and continues to claim it as its own territory. But more recently, a series of actions by the Kosovo government, such as making the euro the sole legal currency and outlawing the Serbian dinar in predominantly Serb-populated areas, have sparked unrest.
Even though the rapprochement between Ankara and Belgrade is relatively recent, the economic ties between the two countries are already significant.
Turkish investments in Serbia have increased from $1 million to $400 million in the past decade, according to the Türkiye-Serbia Business Council, quoted in June by Türkiye’s Anadolu Agency (AA).
Turkish exports to Serbia reached $2.13 billion in 2022, up from $1.14 billion in 2020, according to Serbian official figures.
Serbia is also an important tourist destination for Turkish nationals, second only to Bosnia-Herzegovina.
