KABUL: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrived in Afghanistan yesterday, the latest world leader to visit the war-ravaged country since President Ashraf Ghani took power after a prolonged political standoff.
Erdogan met Ghani, his first vice president Abdul Rashid Dostum, and his former poll rival Abdullah Abdullah, who took the new role of ‘chief executive’, a Turkish official said.
During his one-day tour Erdogan will also visit Turkish troops based in Afghanistan.
Ghani was sworn in as the new Afghan president in late September after a fraud-tainted election that had plunged Afghanistan into months of political deadlock and threatened to take it on the brink of civil war.
Turkey, which shares religious, historic and cultural ties with Afghanistan, in particular with the Afghan Uzbek community, is also involved in Nato operations with around 390 soldiers and trainers based in the country.
Turkey has refused to take on any combat missions in Afghanistan, fearing a Muslim backlash, with its troops primarily involved in providing security, reconstruction and training.
Turkey has been cited as a potential mediator for negotiations between Kabul and the Taliban insurgents.
British Prime minister David Cameron visited Afghanistan early this month to hold talks with Ghani as Nato-led International troops end their long war against the Taliban.
About 40,000 Nato troops are serving in Afghanistan, but their combat mission is scheduled to finish at the end of this year.
Nato’s follow-up mission, which will take over on January 1, will be made up of 9,800 US troops and about 3,000 soldiers from Germany, Italy and other member nations, among them Turkey.
The new mission -- named ‘Resolute Support’ -- will focus on supporting Afghan forces as they take on the militants, in parallel with US counter-terrorism operations.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan currently serves as the incumbent 12th President of Turkey as of August 28, 2014.
He previously served as the 25th Prime Minister of Turkey from 2003 to 2014 and as the Mayor of Istanbul between 1994 and 1998.
He founded the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2001, leading it to three general election victories in 2002, 2007 and 2011 before stepping down as leader upon his election as President in 2014.
Educated at a Imam Hatip school and graduating from Marmara University in 1981, Erdogan was also a semi-professional footballer playing for Kasımpasa between 1969 and 1982 before being elected Mayor of Istanbul from the Islamist Welfare Party in 1994.
He was banned from office and sentenced to prison for 10 months after reciting a religiously incriminating poem in Siirt in 1998.
He founded the moderately conservative AKP in 2001 and won the 2002 general election with nearly two-thirds of the seats in parliament with Abdullah Gül becoming Prime Minister of the first single-party government since 1987.
Erdogan became Prime Minister in March 2003 after Gül’s government annulled his political ban. AFP
