Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu met Wednesday with the president of the Latin American and Caribbean Parliament (Parlatino), Senadora Silvia Giacoppo.

“Met w/President @giacopposilvia of PARLATINO. Turkish Parliament’s observer status in @Parlatino_org enhances our relations w/Latin America,” Çavuşoğlu said on Twitter.

Turkey joined Parlatino, headquartered in Panama, as an observer member in October 2021.

Çavuşoğlu’s Panama visit on his Latin American tour follows stops in Colombia, Uruguay, Brazil and Ecuador and will continue with Venezuela before he returns to Turkey this weekend.

Turkey’s diplomatic relations with countries in Latin America and the Caribbean date back to the second half of the 19th century, the era of the Ottoman Empire. In 1926, Chile became the first Latin American country to recognize the Republic of Turkey, and other countries followed its lead to establish ties and open diplomatic missions. However, Ankara’s relations with the countries in the region remained friendly but mostly “dormant” until the 1990s, according to the Foreign Ministry, which notes that it was mostly caused by “distance” and Cold War ideology when Turkey and Latin American countries were on the opposite ideological axis.

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