BUDAPEST: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Budapest on Sunday, with energy security and Sweden’s membership of NATO on the agenda for both countries.
Hungary has still not voted to approve the Nordic country’s entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, having aligned itself with Turkiye which had long blocked Sweden’s membership before lifting its veto last month.
Both countries’ parliaments are currently on holiday. “We can come back to the issue at the autumn session,” Hungary’s Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Facebook, “We have agreed to stay in touch.”
The two countries have also discussed strengthening their energy cooperation, given that Hungary already receives a large proportion of its gas via the TurkStream pipeline, which transports Russian gas across the Black Sea.
Budapest and Ankara will also be deepening their “strategic partnership,” an announcement due to be made official during a visit by Erdogan scheduled for December.
The Turkish leader’s visit is part of a series of diplomatic meetings organized by Orban to mark the World Athletics Championships, which opened on Saturday.
Among other dignitaries welcomed on Sunday were the presidents of Serbia, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan as well as President Serdar Berdymukhamedov of Turkmenistan.
Szijjarto welcomed “the close cooperation between Central Asia and the Western Balkans,” which he said was especially important given the energy crisis.
Serbia has promised to “provide the necessary transit capacity” if Ukraine decides to stop allowing Russian gas to pass through its territory to be transported to European countries, he added.
An agreement was also signed with Azerbaijan on storing 50 million cubic meters of gas on Hungarian soil.
Hungary, the only country EU member state to have maintained links with the Kremlin since the beginning of the Ukraine war, has in recent years pursued a policy of opening up to the East, not only toward Russia, but also toward Central Asia and China.
Viktor Orban was delighted to welcome his “political friends” at the weekend. Hungary’s Western partners, who regularly accuse him of authoritarian excess, are absent.
Turkiye’s leader Erdogan in Hungary for NATO, energy talks
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Turkiye’s leader Erdogan in Hungary for NATO, energy talks
- Turkish leader’s visit is part of a series of diplomatic meetings organized by Orban to mark the World Athletics Championships
Iraqi army fully takes over key base following US withdrawal
BAGHDAD: US forces have fully withdrawn from an air base in western Iraq in implementation of an agreement with the Iraqi government, Iraqi officials said Saturday.
Washington and Baghdad agreed in 2024 to wind down a US-led coalition fighting the Daesh group in Iraq by September 2025, with US forces departing bases where they had been stationed.
However, a small unit of US military advisers and support personnel remained. Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani in October told journalists that the agreement originally stipulated a full pullout of US forces from the Ain Al-Asad air base in western Iraq by September. But “developments in Syria” since then required maintaining a “small unit” of between 250 and 350 advisers and security personnel at the base.
Now all US personnel have departed.
Iraqi Army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Abdul Amir Rashid Yarallah oversaw the assignment of tasks and duties to various military units at the base on Saturday following the withdrawal of US forces and the Iraqi Army’s full assumption of control over the base, the military said in a statement.
The statement added that Yarallah “instructed relevant authorities to intensify efforts, enhance joint work, and coordinate between all units stationed at the base, while making full use of its capabilities and strategic location.”
A Ministry of Defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly confirmed that all US forces had departed the base and had also removed all American equipment from it.
There was no statement from the US military on the withdrawal.
US forces have retained a presence in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq and in neighboring Syria.
The departure of US forces may strengthen the hand of the government in discussions around disarmament of non-state armed groups in the country, some of which have used the presence of US troops as justification for keeping their own weapons.
Al-Sudani said in a July interview with The Associated Press that once the coalition withdrawal is complete, “there will be no need or no justification for any group to carry weapons outside the scope of the state.”
