A senior UAE diplomat said Wednesday that the Arab world would not be led by Turkey, the Gulf state’s first comment on Ankara since a quarrel broke out last week over a retweet by the Emirati foreign minister that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called an insult.
Anwar Gargash, minister of state for foreign affairs of the United Arab Emirates, said there was a need for Arab countries to rally around the “Arab axis” of Saudi Arabia and Egypt. “The sectarian and partisan view is not an acceptable alternative, and the Arab world will not be led by Tehran or Ankara,” he wrote on his official Twitter page.
Last week, Turkey summoned the charge d’affaires at the Emirati Embassy in Ankara, after UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan shared a tweet that accused Turkish troops of looting money and manuscripts from the holy city of Medina in 1916 during World War I, when the city was under Ottoman rule.
Erdogan himself lashed out: “Some impertinent man sinks low and goes as far as to accuse our ancestors of thievery. ... What spoiled this man? He was spoiled by oil, by the money he has,” the Turkish leader said at an awards ceremony.
Turkey’s state-run Anadolu newspaper reported Saturday that Turkey planned to rename the street where the UAE Embassy is located in Ankara after Fakhreddin Pasha, the commander of the Ottoman Turkish troops at Medina in 1916.
The UAE sees itself as a bulwark against political forms of Islam, and views Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted ruling AK Party as a supporter of groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, which it opposes.
Ties were further strained by Ankara’s support for Qatar after Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt imposed sanctions on the Gulf nation in June over a dispute in which the Arab states accused Doha of supporting terrorism. Doha denies this.
Reuters
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