Turkish PM praises growing ties with Syria

Turkey's prime minister praised booming ties with one-time foe Syria, saying that a joint dam project at the border between the two neighbors would further strengthen cooperation

AFP, Sunday 6 Feb 2011

"We want the whole region to prosper, together with Turkey... that we struggle not to walk all over each other but to help each other. And we have achieved this with Syria," Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in televised remarks at the Turkish-Syrian border.

He was speaking at a ground-breaking ceremony for a joint "Friendship Dam" to be built over the Orontes river at the border, also attended by his Syrian counterpart Mohammed Naji Otri.

Erdogan was to travel to the Syrian city of Aleppo for talks with President Bashir al-Assad later Sunday.

"God willing, the dam will be completed in a short time. God willing, we will jointly use the electricity to be produced and we will jointly irrigate our fields," Erdogan said.

Turkey and Syria also plan to set up a joint bank, inaugurate a high-speed train between Aleppo and the southern Turkish city of Gaziantep and link their natural gas networks as part of other projects by the end of 2011, he added.

After decades of animosity, Turkish-Syrian ties have flourished since 1998, when Damascus forced Turkish Kurd rebel Abdullah Ocalan out of Syria, where he had enjoyed safe haven.

Syria, along with Iraq, have often complained that Turkey -- with a series of dams built on the Euphrates and Tigris -- monopolizes the waters of the two rivers.

Under Erdogan's Islamist-rooted government, ties with Arab countries have seen a spectacular revival, with Ankara signing a series of trade deals and visa-free travel accords with countries in the region.

Ankara's drive for a leadership role in the Middle East has led some to suggest that Erdogan's government is pursuing a "neo-Ottoman" policy in a region its forebears ruled for centuries.

Pointing to a shared history, Erdogan said Sunday that "Turks, Arabs and other ethnic groups in the region fought together and died together" against the Crusaders, Christian knights from western Europe who fought for control of parts of Turkey and the Middle East in the Middle Ages.

"And not only against the Crusades, throughout the 1,000 years that followed we were together on this soil, we were brothers to each other.

"We have always said that there should be no problems between brothers... and that if there are any, they should be resolved," he said.

Source: Ahram.
Link: http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/5096.aspx.