Turkey's Erdogan starts Balkan tour in Albania

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrived in Albania Thursday on the first stop of a Balkan tour that will also take him to Serbia as he tries to boost ties with a region once ruled by the Ottoman empire.

Erdogan will inaugurate the Great Mosque of Tirana, the largest mosque in the Balkans, which has been paid for by Turkey.

Some 600 Turkish companies employ more than 15,000 people in Albania, Erodgan said in February when he hosted Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama.

It is one of the five biggest foreign investors in the country, he said, with $3.5 billion (3.2 billion euros) committed there.

The two NATO member countries also have close military ties, with Turkey supplying Tirana with its Bayraktar TB2 drones.

On Friday, Erdogan will move on to Serbia, where Turkey made a major diplomatic comeback in 2017 with a landmark visit to Belgrade.

The trip helped Erdogan and his Serbian counterpart Aleksandar Vucic mend ties between the countries.

The five centuries of the Ottoman presence in Serbia have traditionally weighed heavily on relations between Belgrade and Ankara.

Another source of tension has been Turkey's cultural and historic ties with Serbia's former breakaway province of Kosovo. Kosovo declared independence in 2008, a move Belgrade still refuses to recognise.

But Erdogan's 2017 visit repaired Turkey's relationship with Serbia, Belgrade-based analyst Vuk Vuksanovic told AFP.

Since then "the Balkans is quite a success story for Turkey", he added.

- Military cooperation -

Even so, it has not been all plain sailing with Belgrade furious last year when Turkey sold drones to Kosovo, something Serbia said was "unacceptable".

But the row could be patched up, the analyst insisted.

"I would not be surprised if we see a military deal at the end of this visit," Vuksanovic said.

He expected the talks in Belgrade to focus on "military cooperation, the position of Turkish companies, and attempts by Belgrade to persuade Ankara to tone down support for Kosovo."

Even though the rapprochement is relatively recent, economic ties between the two countries are already significant.

Turkish investment in Serbia has rocketed from $1 million to $400 million over the past decade, the Turkey-Serbia business council told Turkey's Anadolu news agency.

Turkish exports to Serbia hit $2.13 billion in 2022, up from $1.14 billion in 2020, according to official Serbian figures.

Turkish tourists are also hugely important for Serbia, second only in visitor numbers to those from Bosnia.