Polish President Andrzej Duda in Ankara after the meeting with Turkish President Recep Erdogan emphasized that almost 100,000 people cross the Polish border every day and it is a refugee crisis in Poland. The Turkish leader thanked Poland, its government and institutions for helping refugees from Ukraine. “This behavior is really admirable”, said Erdogan. Both politicians promised to support each other in NATO and to increase bilateral trade to USD 10 billion.

“Turkey is a very important country in the region. It makes a great contribution and plays a great role for peace”, said the President of Poland, noting that the most important topic in their discussion was the Russian-Ukrainian war.

In this context, President Andrzej Duda called on international organizations to intensify their efforts to restore peace in Ukraine.

“There are many opportunities and a great ability to develop bilateral relations between our two countries”, said the Polish president, adding that he hopes that the volume of our trade will exceed USD 10 billion.

“We agreed on the need to accelerate diplomatic efforts to stop the war. Turkey will continue its efforts to achieve a ceasefire. As a country hosting the largest number of refugees in the world in 8 years, Turkey understands best the challenges facing Poland. I would like to thank the Polish authorities once again for facilitating the border crossing and evacuation of our citizens in Ukraine. Their support for delivering our humanitarian aid to Ukraine is also commendable”, said the Turkish President.

Recep Erdogan also revealed that during the talks with President Duda focused on the idea of “crowning the strategic partnership between Turkey and Poland by establishing a High-Level Strategic Cooperation Council. We will accelerate our work preparing the first meeting of the Council in Warsaw in the second half of this year”, informed Erdogan.

On the sidelines of the visit, five Polish-Turkish agreements were finalized. The most important are the defense contracts. As a result, the Polish army will be equipped with 20 Turkish Bayraktar combat drones. The contract is supplemented with a logistics and training package, as well as an offset for the service to be performed by a Polish military company.

Adrian Andrzejewski