Recep Tayyip Erdogan, president of Turkey, arrived on Monday with a promise of salvation to Caracas. “We’re going to cover most of the needs of Venezuela, we have that force, we have that opportunity,” he said. In his first official visit to Venezuela, Erdogan was received with honors by his counterpart Nicolas Maduro. He listened to the Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, gave flowers to the Liberator Simon Bolivar in the National Pantheon, and both are gathered at the Teresa Carreño Theater with about 200 entrepreneurs of the two countries. A long journey that concluded in a working meeting in the Palace of Miraflores.
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None of the Governments has detailed, for the time being, bilateral agreements. According to Maduro, there is a mutual interest of investing more 5,100 million dollars in different areas. The president Turkish asked “to improve the business environment for entrepreneurs”. Turkey becomes an ace under the sleeve for the decadent chavismo. At the helm of a country ruined and with a Government isolated, accusing as ever the rigours of international economic sanctions, Maduro tries to weather the storm by relying on one of their new allies.
Both Executives have decided to place their relations and interests “at the highest level”, according to the vice-president of the economic area of Venezuela, Tarek El Aissami. The aim of the visit is to “strengthen the bonds of co-operation” and to give continuity to the good crumbs that have been cultivated the two administrations in the last three years. Mature as he was in Ankara, the inauguration of Erdogan, last month in July. For the expert in international politics, Carlos Romero does not fit matches the ideological between these heads of Governments, but other common interests. “Venezuela is playing with countries that have two fundamental characteristics: positions the anti-western and authoritarian character”, he explains.
The successor political Hugo Chávez seeks to provide the image of that with the visit of Erdogan, his invitation to the inauguration of the president of Mexico, Andrés López Obrador, and now with a surprising encounter with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, is not isolated fully by the international community. “I’m going out to Moscow to close the year 2018 with a gold brooch in terms of the strategic relationships that Venezuela builds with the world,” Maduro said on the night of Monday close to its presidential jet.
The expert Sadio Garavini believes that it is a “phenomenon of image” and highlights the opacity of the economic agreements. “In the case of Turkey, surely will get a portion of the oil reserves. There are many reserves and little production. What other are sales of gold and coltan, probably at prices very favorable to the turks,” he said.
at the time, Erdogan has referred to investments in the areas of energy, mining, tourism, agriculture, transport, health, education and security. However, a report in the portal Armando.info demonstrates that your business is extending to the Local Committees of Supply and Production (CLAP), a food distribution program denounced by corruption, and by becoming a mechanism of social control of chavez.
Turkey is attracted by the mineral deposits of the caribbean country, already exploited anárquicamente, while Maduro has sought to provide the maximum of guarantees and royalties possible to their new members. In August, the state Company General Mining de Venezuela (the main producer of gold) and Carbones del Zulia were associated with two companies registered in Istanbul between 2014 and 2015, Marilyns Proje Yatirim and Glenmore Proje Insaat, and with owners of little reputation in the business world. Victor Cano, minister of Mines of Venezuela, said in an interview with Reuters in July that the Central Bank of Venezuela, preferred to export and refine gold in Turkey and not in Switzerland by the “concerns” generated by the sanctions imposed by the united States and Europe. For then said that it had exported nearly $ 800 million in gold just in the first half of 2018.
The empathy between the rulers of two countries that have little in common, found a handhold in the technical exercise of policy and the dimension is authoritarian in its power projects. Maduro inherited from Chavez in a optical very special to identify dictatorships of character, multi-party, broken off of the values of the West, in which power leveraging, as was the case of Belarus, another exotic friend of Venezuela.
In 2016, the leader chavez urged the opposition to be reflected in the “mirror” of Turkey, a country where there was an attempt of military coup was brutally suppressed by Erdogan, and in which many military and activists civilians ended up in jail. After justifying the actions of his counterpart, eurasian and say hello, Maduro warned that Erdogan would be a “child’s chest” in front of what he would do if his political opponents did something similar. The bilateral relations have not stopped growing since then, although there were commercial ties.
Turkish Airlines had landed in Caracas with itineraries ambitious, at a time when many airlines left the country for debts that are not cancelled by the State. In the television venezuelan government begin to put some seriate turks. Turkey is one of the few destinations that you can visit casually the hierarchs chavistas, beginning by the own Mature, who starred recently a scandal viral after being recorded with his wife Cilia Flores dining in the luxurious restaurant of the chef Nusret Gokce, known as Salt Bae, in Istanbul.
The cultural exchange also is notorious in this alliance. The newly completed Book fairs in Caracas and Tourism, organized by chavez, presented among its offerings what’s new, carpets, kitchen, finished products, and folk dances Turkish attendees. The brotherhood seems not to be transient.
