By Shafiq Morton At a reception dinner hosted by AWQAF SA, held at the Ghazali Centre in Pretoria on 23 August, incoming Turkish ambassador to SA, Elif Comuglu Ulgen, paid tribute to the warm welcome she had received upon arriving in South Africa. A career diplomat who has worked at the UN, NATO and in Pakistan, she is also the serving ambassador for Swaziland and Lesotho. In her address to ulama, community leaders, ambassadors and NGOs, she said that she was touched by her reception upon landing in South Africa. Explaining that landing in a new country can be a daunting experience, she paid tribute to the role of Middle East envoy, Muhammad Dangor – former SA ambassador to Syria and Libya – who took time to ease her into the South African diplomatic landscape. “Ubuntu is what happened to me, and I pay tribute to South African friendship. You are in our hearts. Turkish people never forget their enemies and they never forget their friends,” she said. In a wide-ranging address, the ambassador touched on a number of issues, including Syria. She said meeting the imam of the mosque at the Ghazali Centre had been a moving experience, as he originally came from Aleppo. She said that Turkey’s role in opening her borders to refugees from the Syrian crisis was more than just an issue of them being refugees. Aleppo was a beautiful, historic city with Ottoman heritage. “Syrians are our own people,” she explained, adding that before the ...
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