President Gül discusses Turkish hostages in Mosul with Foreign Minister Davutoğlu

ANKARA

A fighter of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) holds an ISIL flag and a weapon on a street in the city of Mosul, June 23, 2014. REUTERS Photo

President Abdullah Gül and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu held an unscheduled meeting on July 9 in order to talk about recent foreign policy developments, according to officials from the presidency. The issues on the agenda included the situation in Israel and Palestine, the Syrian crisis, and the Turkish nationals still held by militants of the Islamic State (IS) in Mosul.

The meeting, which was not cited on Gül’s daily agenda released in the morning, was announced by Davutoğlu’s office shortly after noon. Gül held the meeting in Ankara after hosting Zambia Foreign Minister Harry Kalaba at a scheduled meeting in Istanbul.

President Gül summoned Davutoğlu in order to “talk about some foreign policy matters,” officials said.

Following his meeting with Gül, Davutoğlu travelled to Uzbekistan for a first official visit to the central Asian country by a foreign minister in 13 years, amid efforts to improve troubled relations.

In 1991, Turkey was the first country to recognize the independence of Uzbekistan, an overwhelmingly Turkic-speaking nation and the most populous state in former Soviet Central Asia

However, relations with Uzbekistan took a nosedive in 2005, when Uzbek troops killed hundreds of demonstrators in the town of Andijan, provoking an international outcry. Turkey backed a U.N. resolution condemning Uzbekistan over human rights violations in Andijan, provoking the ire of strongman Uzbek President Islam Karimov.