Peres apologized to Erdoğan over my personal phone after Davos spat, Davutoğlu says

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Future Party leader and former prime minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has said that former Israeli President Shimon Peres apologized to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan over his personal phone after the spat at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2009.

Davutoğlu said that he engaged in backdoor diplomacy for Peres to apologize after then-Prime Minister Erdoğan walked off the stage following an angry exchange with Peres during a panel discussion on Gaza, vowing never to return to the annual gathering.

"He [Erdoğan] knows that I engaged in backdoor diplomacy for Peres to apologize as a chief advisor and that this apology was conveyed over my personal phone," Davutoğlu said on Aug. 15.

The Future Party leader's remarks came in response to Erdoğan's comments that accused Davutoğlu of siding with Israel.

"Those who were at Davos founded a new party now. When we said, 'One minute,' they were saying, 'Now we're in trouble,'" Erdoğan said, referring to his angry remarks on stage when he was asking for his speech time to be extended to be able to respond to Peres.

Davutoğlu, in response, pointed to the fact that he was appointed foreign minister two months after the incident.

"If we had said that we were in trouble, he wouldn't have made me foreign minister two months after this incident," he said, adding that the atmosphere at Davos and in Turkey completely changed after Peres' apology.

According to Davutoğlu, he also wrote parts of the speech that Erdoğan gave upon his return from Davos to Istanbul.

"It was me who wrote, 'We won't act based on what other countries are thinking. The other countries will be forced to act based on what Turkey is thinking,'" he said.

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