A senior UAE official said that Arab-Turkish relations as not in their best state, calling on Ankara to respect Arab sovereignty and stop harming it and stop supporting movements that seek to change Arab regimes.
“It is no secret that Arab-Turkish relations aren’t in their best state,” UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash said in a tweet.
“In order to return to balance, Ankara has to respect Arab sovereignty and deal with its neighbors with wisdom and rationality,” he said.
Gargash added in tweets that “supporting movements that are trying to change regimes by violence does not represent a rational trend towards neighboring countries, and Ankara is required to respect the sovereignty of the Arab states."
Gargash's calls come in light of the continued Turkish practices to provoke controversy with the UAE on a number of issues, most recently was the Ankara Municipality's intention to put the name of one of the Ottoman figures “Fahreddin Pasha” on the street where the UAE Embassy is located.
This came after the historical figure has provoked a diplomatic dispute because of a tweet of which UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan has retweeted in December.
The original tweet accused Fahreddin Pasha of stealing some antiquities and money in Medina in 1916, which provoked Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who defended Pasha.
The UAE was not the only country to be exposed to so-called "street diplomacy" in the United States as the United States also faced these practices.
A street close to the US Embassy in Ankara was named "Olive Branch", referring to Ankara's military operation against Fighters of the Washington-backed Kurdish People's Protection Units.
The Turkish attack on the Syrian Kurds has renewed tension between Ankara and Washington, who are allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
