Turkish Chief of Defence visits Hungary

Immediately after arriving in Budapest, General Musa Avsever paid a visit to the heroes’ cemetery of Turkish soldiers who had fallen on the Galician front during the First World War. The high-ranking guest and his entourage were received by honor guards with military honors in the Budapest Turkish Military Cemetery section of the Kozma Street cemetery, to the sounds of the national anthem of Turkey and then that of Hungary.

In what followed, the general – who had earlier been the commander of the Turkish Land Forces and was appointed Chief of General Staff last week by President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan – laid a wreath at the memorial column erected in honor of the soldier heroes of the XV Corps of the Ottoman Empire, who had fought under the command of the German Empire’s South Army on the Galician front between 1916–1917. Then, he attended a Turkish-language prayer together with the members of the delegation headed by him.

During his visit to the Turkish military plot, the Turkish Chief of General Staff personally placed the flowers of remembrance on the soldiers’ graves. The commemoration was closed with a trumpet playing the tune of silence, Il Silenzio.

The military leader has arrived in Hungary in the company of his spouse, and the delegation led by him includes Turkey’s Ambassador to Budapest Gülşen Karanis Ekşioğlu as well as Turkish military attaché Feride Tosun.