President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan answered questions from journalists on the plane returning from his visits to Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
Before the questions, President Erdoğan gave a general assessment. President Erdoğan's comments were as follows:
"We have completed our visit to Saudi Arabia and Egypt. We had extremely fruitful meetings with the leaders and delegations of both countries. We extensively discussed our bilateral relations in all their dimensions. As leading countries in our region, we held consultations on current developments, particularly Palestine and Syria, with a 'regional ownership' approach. In Saudi Arabia, the first stop of our visit, we had a productive meeting with Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman."
"As Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, we aim to be involved in all processes, thereby protecting the rights of our Palestinian brothers. I would like to express my thanks to the authorities of both countries for the hospitality shown to me and my delegation during our visits. I hope our visit will bring good fortune for our countries, and I thank you."
"We have deeply rooted relations with Saudi Arabia, which have cultural and historical dimensions. To develop this, we signed important agreements during this visit. The progress our country has made in the defense industry is being followed with interest by Saudi Arabia, as well as the rest of the world. We are primarily focused on meeting our own needs in the defense industry. In addition, we are striving to meet the needs of our friends and brothers. We are signing significant cooperation agreements with Saudi Arabia in the defense industry, and we are determined to develop this. KAAN is not just a warplane; KAAN is a symbol of Türkiye's engineering capability and independent defense will. We have received many laudatory feedbacks regarding KAAN. As we gain more influence in this field globally, our collaborations of this kind will certainly increase. Moreover, there is a joint investment with Saudi Arabia on this matter. We can realize this joint investment at any time."
"First and foremost, we are doing our best to de-escalate the tension between America and Iran before it drags the region into a new conflict and chaos. For that, as you know, I had a meeting with US President Donald Trump, and I spoke with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian the very next day. I also had a trilateral meeting in Istanbul with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi and my Foreign Minister. We are keeping the issue hot. We have clearly stated our opposition to military intervention in Iran and conveyed this to our counterparts. So far, I see that the parties want to make room for diplomacy. This stands before us as a positive development. The way to solve problems is not through conflict but through reconciliation and negotiation. The process is alive and not broken.
The ground for dialogue and diplomacy is still open. I believe that after progress is made in lower-level talks, negotiations at the leadership level will also be beneficial. It is important that a negotiating table will somehow be set up when military tensions have increased so much. We hope that problems will be resolved through dialogue and that no new conflict will erupt in our region. We will work to strengthen the negotiation ground through both leader diplomacy and meetings at other levels. We will see how much this ground expands and whether other countries get involved."
