Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan arrived in Albania on Thursday on the first stop of a Balkan tour this week that will also take him to Serbia as he tries to boost ties with a region once ruled by the Ottoman empire, Agence France-Presse reported.
Erdoğan will inaugurate the Great Mosque of Tirana, the largest mosque in the Balkans, which has been paid for by Turkey.
When he hosted Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama in February, Erdoğan pointed out that Turkey was among the five largest foreign investors in Albania with $3.5 billion (3.2 billion euros) committed there.
More than 600 Turkish companies employ more than 15,000 Albanian workers, he added.
The two NATO member countries also cooperate in the military field. Tirana’s military arsenal includes Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drones, first of which arrived this year.
On Friday, Erdoğan will head to Serbia, where Turkey made a major political comeback in 2017 with his landmark visit to Belgrade.
At the time, Erdoğan and his Serbian counterpart Aleksandar 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 historic ties between Turkey 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 Turkey’s relationship with Serbia, Belgrade-based analyst Vuk Vuksanovic told AFP.
Since then “the Balkans is quite a success story for Turkey,” he added.
Military cooperation
Occasionally the ties between Turkey and Serbia were frosty, including when Ankara last year sold drones to Kosovo sparking anger of 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.”
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 one million to 400 million dollars in the past decade, according to the Turkey-Serbia business council, quoted in June by Turkey’s Anadolu news agency.
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.