Turkey's Foreign Ministry rejects 'baseless' Arab League resolutions against Ankara

An Arab League statement called on Ankara to withdraw its troops from Syria, Libya and Iraq, and to "desist from provocative actions that undermine confidence-building and threaten the security and stability of the region."

Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said that the "insistence" of some Arab countries on condemning Ankara "is to cover up the subversive activities of those countries."

The ministry added that Turkey had a "principled and resolute stance," devoted to"regional and global peace and stability of security" and respected the "sovereignty, territorial integrity and political unity" of Arab countries.

It rejected the resolutions against Turkey as "baseless".

The ministry also emphasized that some of the Arab League states had noted their opposition to the decisions, which it said had been adopted "without conducting a transparent negotiation process between the member countries."

On Wednesday, Arab League foreign ministers convened in Egypt's capital Cairo, where the chairmanship of the current session was transferred from Egypt to Qatar.

Ankara has had poor relations with Saudi Arabia and the UAE as well as Egypt in the past few years. It sided with Qatar when those countries imposed a blockade on it in 2017. The blockade was lifted in January this year.

Qatar’s Foreign Minister attended Wednesday’s meeting, becoming the highest-ranking Doha official to visit Egypt since Doha reconciled with the blockading states 

Turkey has also been at loggerheads with the UAE in particualar over regional differences in Libya, Syria and Somalia, where they have supported rival political factions.

Yet in a rare occurrence of positive communication between the countries last month, the UAE's Minister of State for Advanced Technology and Turkey’s Minister of Industry and Technology congratulated each other for their countries' respective space programmes on Twitter.

Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to stay connected