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His Highness the Amir Sheikh Mishal Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah’s visit to Turkey on Tuesday, the first since assuming the leadership post, is another milestone added to the six decades of fruitful ties. The visit also comes to celebrate the 60th anniversary of establishing diplomatic ties. The strength of ties between Kuwait and Turkey expanded beyond the political realm, reaching high peaks in various domains such as investments and the economy, to name but a few. Kuwait opened its first embassy in Ankara in 1971, a step followed by the opening of the Turkish embassy in Kuwait in the same year.
Relations continued to solidify throughout the years since then, and they were put to the test during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, an event that was met by strong Turkish condemnation and opposition. In 1991, the late Amir Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah visited Ankara post-Iraqi invasion in a display of gratitude towards the Turkish stance with Kuwait during its darkest times. Kuwait returned the favor in July 2016, when the Kuwaiti government stood in solidarity with its Turkish counterpart during the failed coup.
The then late Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah sent a cable to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, expressing his support for the Turkish leader and the will of the Turkish people. During the history of relations, major visits occurred between leaders and top figures. In 2008, the late Amir Sheikh Sabah visited Turkey, resulting in the signing of seven agreements to boost relations in various domains. A second visit of the late Amir Sheikh Sabah occurred in April 2013, with eight bilateral agreements signed during the visit.
Between 2008 and 2014, several ministers from Kuwait and Turkey exchanged visits and reached a plethora of agreements on the military, security, and several other prominent fields. In 2009, the late Amir Sheikh Sabah headed Kuwait’s delegation to the 25th OIC Standing Committee for Economic and Commercial Cooperation (COMCEC), which was held in Istanbul. The late Amir Sheikh Sabah also headed Kuwait‘s delegation to the 13th OIC Summit in Istanbul in April 2016 and the international summit for humanitarian work, which was also held in Istanbul in May of the same year.
The late Amir Sheikh Sabah also headed Kuwait‘s delegation to the urgent summit for the OIC, dubbed the Al-Quds (Jerusalem) summit, which was held in Istanbul in 2017. On the Turkish side, former President of Turkey Abdullah Gul visited Kuwait on three separate occasions in 2009, 2011, and 2014 as part of the continuous efforts on the part of the two countries to bolster ties. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Kuwait on two occasions in 2015 and 2017 to boost relations and also play a part in the mediation efforts to resolve the Gulf relations crisis.
In 2017, President Erdogan bestowed on the late Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah the Order of State award for his role in bolstering relations and his global humanitarian efforts and response. In return, Sheikh Sabah bestowed on President Erdogan the order of Mubarak the Great for his regional and international efforts. Kuwait‘s support for Turkey went beyond the political domain. In August 2021, the late Amir Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah sent Kuwaiti firefighters and equipment to help Turkey fend off the forest fires, which engulfed parts of the country. In February 2023, the latter country faced a devastating earthquake.
The late Amir Sheikh Nawaf ordered the establishment of an air bridge to deliver humanitarian aid to those affected by the natural disaster. Kuwait donated $30 million to help with relief aid efforts in Turkey and Syria. The total of government and private donations reached $97.7 million. In the commercial domain, Kuwait exports to Turkey in the third quarter of 2023 reached KD 13.5 million, while Turkish exports to Kuwait reached KD 169.2 million. In 2016, the volume of commercial exchange reached $1.2 billion.
In the same year, the number of projects executed by Turkish contracting companies in Kuwait reached $6.5 billion, while the volume of direct Kuwaiti investments in Turkey reached $1.7 billion. In 2017, the number of companies with Kuwaiti capital in Turkey reached 291, including 395 branches of the Kuveyt Turk Bank, of which the Kuwait Finance House (KFH) bank has a percentage of shares. In regards to contributions by the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED), the fund provided Turkey with KD 106 million in loans, with the first in 1979 to finance a Bosphorus transmission line crossing worth $8.8 million.
Humanitarian domain
In the humanitarian domain, the KFAED provided a loan to rebuild the railway network for connecting housing units in the aftermath of the August 17, 1999 earthquake in the Marmara region, and an additional $28.3 million was provided to help rehabilitate infrastructure in areas affected by the same earthquake. In November 2014, the town of the “humanitarian leader,” the title bestowed by the UN on the late Amir Sheikh Sabah in 2014, was opened in eastern Turkey in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake in 2011 on instructions by the Kuwaiti leadership. The earthquake led to the deaths of 644 people, the injuries of 4,152 others, and the destruction of 2,262 housing units.
The “Humanitarian Leader” township was conducted in two stages to help the affected by swiftly housing people as well as constructing four apartment complexes housing 64 units, serving over 80 families affected by the earthquake. The Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad village for Syrian refugees was also established in southern Turkey to house families fleeing from violence in Syria, consisting of 1,248 houses in addition to schools, medical centers, mosques, and other facilities. It was officially opened in April 2017. In the same year, the Kuwait Medical Center for Prosthetics was opened in Istanbul to serve Syrian refugees.
Kuwait contributed to easing the burden on the Turkish government, which hosted 3.5 million Syrian refugees, hosting three donor conferences since the beginning of the conflict in Syria in 2011 as well as partaking in the 2016 conference in London in February 2016 and discussing the plight of the Syrian refugees in the September 2016 leaders’ summit held in New York. In the tourism domain, Turkey exempted Kuwaitis from visas, a step that took effect on August 15, 2017. This brought the number of Kuwaiti tourists by 2022 to 479,278 and 362,657 by 2023. The number of Kuwaitis residing in Turkey reached 5,457 in 2023.
KUNA