Erdogan met with Netanyahu for the first time in New York, and is readying to visit Jerusalem as soon as next month.

ANKARA — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday returned to Turkey from his four-day New York visit after cementing Turkey’s regional fence-mending with Greece and Israel. 

Erdogan’s one-on-one schedule on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly largely focused on regional diplomacy, including meetings with Israeli, Greek, Iraqi and Algerian leaders. Erdogan also met with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Monday. 

Erdogan’s meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday marked the first-ever official face-to-face meeting, as relations between the two were highly strained during Netanyahu's previous terms in office (2009-2021). The two countries restored their diplomatic ties last July as part of Ankara’s regional fence-mending push, which aimed to overcome Turkey’s regional isolation and economic hardships by restoring its ties with Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

In the statement after the meeting, "The two leaders mutually invited each other for visits to Israel and Turkey and it was agreed that these visits would be coordinated and take place soon,” the Israeli side said.

Shortly before the New York meeting, Israel’s Channel 2 reported that Erdogan is interested in arranging a trip to Israel as soon as possible to pray at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque to mark the centennial of the Turkish Republic, which was founded on Oct. 29, 1923.

Netanyahu was scheduled to travel to Turkey last July in what would have been the first visit to Ankara by an Israeli prime minister in 14 years but the trip was postponed, with the Israeli government citing health reasons. 

Erdogan also reached out to Israel's supporters in a meeting with 15 Jewish leaders, where he denounced anti-Semitism.

The meeting according to the Jerusalem Post included "attendees from the Conference of Presidents and various other Jewish organizations, as well as rabbis, leaders of the Turkish Jewish community, and Turkish Jewish Americans."

The Turkish leader’s meeting with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Wednesday, meanwhile, saw an agreement on a date for the resumption of the confidence-building talks between the two countries' defense ministries. The setting of a date for talks came as the latest in a series of steps the two countries have taken to resolve their conflicting territorial claims in the Aegean and Mediterranean seas following the disaster diplomacy after the devastating February earthquakes that hit southern Turkey. 

Source: Al-Monitor