First lady Emine Erdoğan, and the spouse of Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, Birgitta Ed, agreed on the need to fight rising Islamophobia and racism in Europe.
“We evaluated the social projects we were carrying out and shared our views on increasing cultural cooperation,” Erdoğan wrote on Wednesday on social media following the meeting in Vilnius, Lithuania.
“I expressed my regret to Ms. Ed for the disrespect toward our holy book, the Holy Quran, in Sweden,” she added.
A copy of the Quran was burnt outside the Swedish capital's main mosque on June 28, which happened on the Muslim Qurban Bayram, also known as Eid al-Adha, holiday, triggering a diplomatic backlash across the Muslim world.
The Swedish government condemned the Quran burning as "Islamophobic," but added that Sweden had a "constitutionally-protected right to freedom of assembly, expression and demonstration."
