Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected to arrive in Riyadh on Monday on an official visit on the second leg of his three-nation Gulf tour. He will arrive in Riyadh from Bahrain. He will visit Qatar on Tuesday. Newly appointed Saudi Ambassador to Turkey Waleed Bin Abdul Kareem Al-Khureiji was quoted as saying by Anadolu news agency that the Kingdom and Turkey are seeking to bolster bilateral relations in various fields. The leaders of both Saudi Arabia and Turkey are cooperating to defuse conflicts in the Middle East, he said in an interview came on the eve of the scheduled visit by Erdogan to Saudi Arabia. Al-Khureiji said Riyadh and Ankara share identical views on various regional issues, especially on war-torn Syria and Iraq. "Saudi Arabia and Turkey are keen on cooperating to defuse Middle East crises," the Saudi envoy said. He also said that the volume of the Saudi-Turkish trade exchange has jumped to $5.8 billion. "The number of Saudi tourists to Turkey has grown to around 250,000 per year," he said. The ambassador said that the 2015 visit by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman to Turkey to the G-20 summit has ushered in a new era of cooperation between Saudi Arabia and Turkey. "Economic cooperation between the Kingdom and Turkey has been steadily growing since the two countries signed a bilateral cooperation agreement in 1973," he said. Last year, Ankara and Riyadh signed four agreements in the cultural and media fields during a visit to Turkey by Crown Prince Muhamad Bin Naif, deputy premier and minister of interior. "The convention of the Turkish-Saudi Coordination Council in Ankara in recent days was another proof that bilateral relations were growing," he said. The council convened last week under the foreign ministers of both countries to discuss ways of enhancing bilateral relations between Saudi Arabia and Turkey. "The council seeks to boost trade relations between the two states," he said, noting that both capitals were also seeking to cooperate in the field of energy. "While the Kingdom has great potential in this field, Turkey enjoys a strategic location. So both countries are seeking to benefit from this," he said. In 2016, Saudi Arabia and Turkey conducted four joint military drills. "There is an increasing cooperation between the two sides in the military and defense fields," he said, citing a recent visit by Turkish Defense Minister Fikri Isik to Riyadh.
