Ambassador Ömür Budak celebrated the 102nd anniversary of the Republic of Türkiye in style with a reception at his Embassy’s Palermo residence last Wednesday with some 500 guests including Congress Speaker Martín Menem (whose family arrived here as subjects of the Ottoman Empire), former Cabinet chief Nicolás Posse and Federico Pinedo (president for a morning in 2015 and now G20 sherpa).
Following an impressively lengthy message for the occasion from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (a dominant force in Turkish politics throughout almost all this century), Budak addressed his guests. In bilateral relations he could boast signing three agreements in aviation, nuclear technology and Antarctic cooperation (following an important double taxation agreement in previous years) but for Budak the relationship is not limited to the two capitals – next month he will be visiting the República de Turquía school in Orán, Salta and, contrary to the local saying “perdido como turco en la neblina” (“as lost as a Turk in the fog”), he knows the way there, he assured his audience. In conclusion, he said that if he had to sum up the many things in common between the Argentine and Turkish peoples in one word, it would be “resilience” (he said the same thing last year but if you have a good line, why not repeat it?)
Following these formalities, the guests then queued up to relish their kebabs on a cool and sunny afternoon in the Embassy gardens.
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