Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu on Wednesday conveyed Türkiye’s gratitude to the Turkish community in neighboring Bulgaria for their solidarity in the wake of the deadly Feb. 6 earthquakes.
Çavuşoğlu visited Shumen in the Deli Orman region, where the most prominent Turkish population lives in the Balkans. It is also where Turkish investments in Bulgaria are most concentrated.
He held an iftar, or fast-breaking, dinner with the Turkish community at the Şerif Halil Paşa Mosque, restored by the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA).
"You have mobilized everything you had. Those who have nothing to give sent their prayers to Türkiye. Thanks to the aid you collected, more than 800 tents and 145 containers were sent to the earthquake zone," Çavuşoğlu recalled.
"It was an unforgettable, exemplary solidarity," he said, noting that having support from Bulgaria, the first EU country to send search and rescue teams after the earthquakes and the first in the bloc to fly flags at half-staff, was very important for Türkiye.
Turning to Türkiye’s efforts to mitigate global and regional crises, Çavuşoğlu said Ankara would strengthen its entrepreneurial and humanitarian foreign policy.
"We will make more efforts for peace. The country that made the most effort to end the war in Ukraine is Türkiye," he said.
Türkiye maintains constant contact with both sides to ensure no accident happens again at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, he said. Russia captured Ukraine’s plant in 2022, which was damaged by shelling.
"We will also have a meeting with (International Atomic Energy Agency) Director General Rafael Grossi in Vienna on Friday," Çavuşoğlu noted.
In relations with Sofia, Çavuşoğlu informed that the trade volume was $7.4 billion (approximately TL143 billion) in 2022 and managed to cap $1 billion in the first two months of 2023.
Türkiye and Bulgaria share friendly and neighborly relations as NATO allies. The Turkish diaspora in Bulgaria also plays a vital role in promoting bilateral political and economic ties, as the country is home to some 588,318 Bulgarians of Turkish ethnicity. Similarly, Bulgarians have been flocking to Türkiye’s Edirne province in droves, especially in recent months, to stock up on food and clothes.