Turkey hopes that the Corona virus crisis will be an opportunity to mend its strained relations with the United States and Europe, as the past few weeks have sent a large amount of medical aid to more than 60 countries to help cope with the pandemic, and these countries include America, Britain, Spain and Italy.

Written in a coded message on every shipment of Turkish medical aid, a house of poems by the well-known Sufi poet Jalaluddin Rumi said: "After despair there is hope, and after darkness there are many suns."

Turkey's relations with the United States have been exposed to recent tensions due to the Syrian file, and Ankara's deal to buy a Russian missile defense system, while the latter's relations with the European Union were damaged by its human rights file and oil and gas exploration in the eastern Mediterranean waters.

Although Turkey is the ninth largest hotspot in the world for people infected with the Coronavirus, its Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoوlu stated at the end of last month that his country had become the third largest distributor of aid globally during the Corona pandemic, and the aid included masks, protective suits, testing tools, disinfectants, and industrial respirators.

A picture that has many meanings
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A British Air Force military plane, is currently waiting at # Istanbul airport to carry medical equipment produced by # Turkey https://t.co/AO2yUqPm6e pic.twitter.com/ak00xVH4vt

- Moataz Allah Hassan 🎯 (@Almoutaz_bellah) April 21, 2020

To Trump ..
In a message to his American counterpart Donald Trump with one of the shipments, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that he hoped that the "spirit of solidarity" that his country showed American politicians would "better understand the strategic importance of our relations."

Ankara faces the possibility of Washington imposing sanctions on it for its purchase of the Russian S-400 missile defense system, which it received last year but has not yet been fully operational, and despite the risk of sanctions, Turkey says that this system will be operated.

Last Saturday, Erdogan called on the European Union to increase cooperation with his country, in light of the support that Ankara has provided to a number of EU countries to fight the virus. The President said, "I hope that the European Union now understands that we are all in one boat."

Turkey is still a candidate for membership in the European Union, but negotiations for membership have been stalled for a long time due to a number of political differences, especially what the West calls Turkey's human rights record, and gas exploration in the waters of Cyprus and the eastern Mediterranean.

Remaining problems
The Turkish foreign minister said that the medical aid initiative has improved the atmosphere in Washington, but stressed that the main problems with the Trump administration remain.

Despite the impact of Turkish medical aid on diplomatic relations, analysts say it is unlikely that it will have lasting results without taking concrete steps to address the fundamental differences, as Fadi Hakura, a researcher at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, believes that "whatever goodwill, or medical diplomacy, The negative repercussions he generated in Washington will not alter the deployment of Turkey's S-400 system.

Gunl Toole, founder and director of the Center for Turkish Studies at the Middle East Institute in Washington, believes that Ankara's differences with the European Union will not be resolved overnight, explaining that "Turkey's problems with its neighbors and its Western allies are too dangerous to solve with a few symbolic steps."