President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will have a busy diplomatic agenda in July.
The president will head to Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan on July 3 to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit for heads of state until July 4.
Two days later, he will head to Shusha, Azerbaijan to attend the Informal Summit of the Organization of Turkic States.
On July 9-11, Erdoğan will be in the U.S. capital Washington D.C. to attend the NATO leaders summit, where he is expected to raise Türkiye's concerns on several issues, including the anti-terror fight.
For Türkiye, counterterrorism largely includes the fight against the PKK and its offshoots, a terrorist group that has led a bloody campaign against the Turkish state since the 1980s, claiming more than 40,000 lives. It is recognized as a terrorist group in Türkiye, the United States and the European Union.
Ankara often condemns “relations” between the terrorist group and certain NATO members as “unacceptable,” “a threat against member states” as well as “against the spirit of alliance.” Those members include the United States, which openly supports the Syrian wing of the PKK through military equipment shipment, under the guise of a fight against Daesh in Syria.
Türkiye refused to ratify the membership bids of Sweden and Finland for more than a year until the Nordic nations met Turkish demands like tightened measures against terrorist groups.
He is expected to hold a series of bilateral meetings with his counterparts and discuss ways to enhance cooperation.
He is also expected to highlight the ongoing crisis in Gaza amid Israel’s attacks, as well as the Rusia-Ukraine war, cooperation on counterterrorism efforts, as well as cooperation in the economy and trade.
Erdoğan has been urging global powers to take concrete action to stop Israel's violations, and criticized Western powers for supporting Israel's attacks on Lebanon, as he warned that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plans to spread the war in Gaza could lead to a 'catastrophe.'
The fallout from Israel's war on Gaza is regularly felt on the Israel-Lebanon frontier, where deadly cross-border exchanges have escalated between Israeli troops and Hezbollah fighters.
Israel, flouting a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire, has faced international condemnation amid its continued brutal offensive on Gaza since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.
