President of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu wear protective masks, meet at Miraflores Palace in Caracas, Venezuela August 18, 2020. Miraflores Palace / Handout via REUTERS
CARACAS (Reuters) – Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu visited Caracas on Tuesday as his country provided medical equipment to help crisis-stricken Venezuela deal with the new coronavirus pandemic.
Turkey has been a key supporter of Venezuela’s Socialist President Nicolas Maduro, who has overseen a six-year economic crisis in the once thriving OPEC nation but has so far made an 18-month effort opposed by the United States to remove it by imposing sanctions on the country’s oil sector.
“Neither sanctions, nor a blockade, nor any kind of situation will prevent us from deepening our economic and commercial relations,” Venetian Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza said in a state television broadcast after meeting with Cavusoglu.
As tensions between Caracas and Washington have grown in recent years, Turkey has deepened its economic ties with Venezuela, exported products for a state-run food distribution program and purchased gold from the South American country.
Cavosoglu also met with Maduro and Vice President Delcy Rodriguez. He said the plane where he arrived had also brought medical equipment, including rapid tests to detect COVID-19.
Venezuela had reported 34,802 cases of the virus since Monday, below levels elsewhere in South America, even though the number of positive tests has increased rapidly in recent weeks.
Report by Mayela Armas and Vivian Sequera in Caracas; Written by Luc Cohen; Edited by Tom Brown
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