President Saakashvili met on May 31 with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Istanbul on the sideline of Partners Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations.

Saakashvili and the Turkish PM discussed bilateral cooperation, as well as "issues related to stability and security in the region," the Georgian President's administration said in a press release, adding that the Turkish PM reaffirmed Ankara's support to Georgia and its NATO integration.

In his speech at the Partners Forum of the UN Alliance of Civilizations in Istanbul on May 31, President Saakashvili focused on Turkey's role in the region and hailed it as "regional leader in the fight for peace."

"We clearly see all over the Middle East in the wider middle east region an emergence of Turkey as a major regional leader, as a principal regional leader in the fight for peace, but also for new way of  seeing things, a new direction for the region," Saakashvili said.

"We should ask why it is happening. Is turkey the most important military power here? Well it’s an important power, but there are other powers all the time meddling much more actively than Turkey. Is Turkey a main economic power? It’s an amazing economic power but there’s also the crossroads of all different economic powers that also are present here. I think what Turkey has in addition to being strong power and economic power is the amazing power of ideas, and an amazing model for the whole region," Saakashvili added.