Analysis for novini.bg by Prof. Vladimir Chukov, a famous Arabist, university lecturer and scientist in the field of Middle East and Islam politics.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Recep Tayyip Erdogan - Turkish politician and prime minister.

Born on February 26, 1954 in Istanbul. Graduated made a historic visit to Saudi Arabia.

It took place five years after the last one, after which bilateral relations deteriorated sharply.

The Turkish press is enthusiastic about a "new era", drawing bright horizons in bilateral trade and hoping the Saudi market will reopen.

Local analysts are conducting an in-depth analysis of whether Erdogan still managed to tear off "Osman's shirt" to start anew with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS).

They allude to the assassination of the third righteous caliph, Uthman bin Afan (644-656).

In the history of Islam, the reminder of "Ottoman's bloodied shirt" has always hinted at a crime that is not forgotten.

Saudi experts draw a parallel with the 2018 assassination of Saudi opposition leader Jamal Hashoghi at the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul.

Then Turkey and Erdogan personally became the most active prosecutor in MBS as the mastermind of the assassination.

Erdogan took the matter to the UN, but in early 2022 he quickly stopped it and filed it with a Saudi court.

With this, Hashoghi's shirt, according to Erdogan, was torn and buried, but did the Crown Prince really accept that intention?

Local experts are skeptical, analyzing the Turkish president's two-day visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

It is as if the program and meetings with individual officials prove the allegations in Saudi social media that Erdogan came in practice "defeated", "humiliated", longing for "oil money flows" and "ending the boycott of Saudi Arabia on Turkish goods".

Behind such an act, experts saw the great test for Erdogan, such as the 2023 presidential election, which the united opposition has a real chance of winning at this stage.

This is possible against the background of inflation above 60% for the last 10 months on an annual basis.

The Turkish president's aspirations to warm relations with MBS lasted about a year.

The behind-the-scenes contacts paid off, but the location and conditions of the future meeting were determined entirely by the Crown Prince.

Thus, the latter, in a public way, said that Erdogan failed to overthrow him after the scandal with the assassination of Hashogi, which the Turkish leader has been trying to inflate for years.

Evidently, in 2022, Erdogan fears a presidential election next year rather than the humiliation of coming to Jeddah and admitting defeat to the strong man in Riyadh.

Erdogan's visit to Saudi Arabia has several dimensions.

In the first place, it is interpreted as

the final defeat of the Muslim Brotherhood, which, encouraged by the Turkish leader, sought to monopolize the momentum of the "Arab Spring",

to take down and upload governments in the region.

Moreover, today came the moment when Turkey banned Hamas leaders from entering Turkish territory under pressure from Israel, which also entered a warming regime.

Ignoring the strong pro-Palestinian / anti-Israel / discourse, as well as the media marginalization of the Palestinian issue (especially during the month of Ramadan), is indicative of the new attitude towards the Islamist party.

Secondly, Erdogan's meeting at Jeddah airport was extremely symptomatic.

The first person he was forced to shake hands with was the governor of Mecca, Emir Khalid al-Faisal.

The latter was the official who was appointed by the MBS in 2018 to become his personal envoy to Erdogan.

At the time, the strong Saudi man wanted (out of court) to reach an agreement with Erdogan on Hashoghi's assassination.

The idea was for al-Faisal to travel to Turkey that year to end the scandal before he went to court.

Erdogan then flatly refused to meet with him and chose to spread the word in the world media.

Probably the Turkish president wanted to discredit MBS in front of the White House in order to overthrow him.

But he obviously misled Republican Trump, who is always looking for economic gain with Democrat Biden,

putting human rights on a pedestal.

Sending this same envoy to the airport is actually revenge on MBS.

In this way she showed him her personal attitude to the then behavior of the Turkish president.

The second sign of MBS's hostility to Erdogan, experts say, is the behavior of the Saudi's body when the Turkish leader physically approached him and hugged him.

Such a hug is symptomatic of great trust.

Experts see MBS's retention of Erdogan's outstretched arms and maintaining a certain distance between the two bodies as a gesture of Saudi displeasure.

Moreover, it is the Turkish president who "offers" the embrace, placing his hands on the shoulders of the Crown Prince, and the Crown Prince is forced to accept them, leaving his hands at the lower level of Erdogan's torso.

It is more than obvious that Erdogan is the initiator of the embrace that the Saudi accepts in front of both delegations and especially in front of the media ... reluctantly.

Erdogan's reception in Saudi Arabia is also a message to his opponent Joe Biden

Joe Biden (Joseph Robin Biden) was an American politician. Joe Biden was born on November 20, 1942. MBS wants to disprove the current White House administration's hypothesis that the Crown Prince is isolated.

It is as if the visit adds to the loud contacts with Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin is a Russian politician.

Born on October 7, 1952 in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg.

With the latter, he spoke on the phone every month about oil prices just before the OPEC + meeting, of which both countries are members.

The Saudi media emphasize that the initiator of the telephone conversations is MBS.

 In fact, the visit of the seeker Erdogan aims not only to show who has great economic opportunities, but also to some extent to suggest who is the leader of the Islamic world.

Years ago, on his own initiative, the Turkish leader ran for the Islamic World in a future enlarged and reformed UN Security Council.

His slogan "The world is more than five" is well known, alluding to the current five permanent members of the veto of this most important body of the universal world organization.

Interestingly, the moment was chosen when the most authoritative Saudi media Al Arabia / hundreds of millions of viewers - author's note / made an extensive interview / more than an hour / with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov

Sergei Viktorovich Lavrov is a Russian diplomat and has been foreign minister since 2004.

The latter will not have such an opportunity in the foreseeable future with the major European and American media.

Moreover, this Arab-language media appearance in Al Arabia was held at a time when Erdogan, claiming to be a leading mediator between the warring Russia and Ukraine, was in Mecca, realizing al imra, his individual worship.

The Turkish president has even launched the term "Istanbul Process" in a bid to initiate a series of meetings between Ukrainian and Russian officials.

At the beginning of the conflict, no one paid attention to Riyadh's expressed desire to mediate the war in Ukraine.

If the war drags on, as the outlook looks, the world's largest oil exporter will work to play a much bigger role in international relations.

The war in Ukraine shows that, along with the military force, the economy is gaining great importance.

This is the aspiration of the strong man in Riyadh, showing his victory over his rival in the Islamic world.

The information came out that MBS was a serious competitor of Elon Musk

Elon Reeve Musk (ˈiːlɒn ˈmʌsk) is a Canadian-American engineer and inventor for the $ 44 billion Twitter purchase that shows that Erdogan is not really in his category.

The latter expressed his position on the change of ownership of this most influential social media not as a candidate-buyer, but as a   

However, another question is whether MBS will be able to overcome the current owner of the White House, which is in the heaviest category, not only in the military-strategic, but also in the economic system of international relations.

However, to summarize, in 1980-1988 King Fahed was an ally of President Reagan, who with his help managed to defeat not only the Soviet Union but the entire Eastern bloc.

Then the Saudi monarch took away the potential huge surplus of energy resources in the budget of the Soviet Union, keeping the price of a barrel at about 20-25 dollars for more than 4 years.

Now the situation is reversed.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, keeping the price of oil at about $ 100 a barrel, gave these surpluses to the current Kremlin master Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin is a Russian politician.

Born October 7, 1952 in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg. Through which quickly guided them to the military budget and invaded Ukraine.

The latest report from the Stockholm Institute for Peace Studies proves this hypothesis.

It is the increased energy prices (additional over 15 billion in Russian budget revenues) since the middle of last year that have made it possible to finance this 150,000 Russian army, which was gathered on the border with the neighboring country and which is currently methodically destroying.

Vladimir Putin

Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Elon Musk

Sergey Lavrov

Joe Biden

war

Prof. Vl. Chukov