According to insider reports, the Pakistani Foreign Ministry has expressed concerns that the Turkish side did not accord the level of importance expected for Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif during his recent visit to that country to attend the swearing-in of the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Sharif was not placed in the first row with important dignitaries and instead seated on the second row.
Analysts say that the frequency with which Sharif travels to Turkey could be the reason for the Turkish government not giving him the protocol expected for a PM, and not taking him seriously any more.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently won Turkey’s presidential election, defeating opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu in a runoff vote, stretching his rule into a third decade.
Further, several newspapers also reported the fact that the Pakistani PM faced an embarrassing situation when his attempt to hug the Turkish President was not reciprocated during his visit.
This embarassment comes a few months after Ankara reportedly also refused to host Pakistani PM Sharif when he wanted to visit the country during the recent earthquake disaster.
The denial to host was followed by further controversy as the Pakistani government had repackaged the aid it had received from Turkey during the 2022 floods and delivered it back as earthquake relief material to the disaster-struck country. The Turkish authorities, upon opening the relief material found it had the message they had written for the Pakistani flood victims last year. The Turkish relief material was delivered to Sindh, a southwestern region of Pakistan which was one of the worst-hit areas due to the flood, according to Pakistani media reports. It appears, the same package was repurposed, repackaged and delivered to Ankara.