Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was among the first world leaders to congratulate Donald Trump on his election victory on Wednesday, signaling his pleasure at seeing the man he calls “his friend” become president of the United States once again.

“I congratulate my friend Donald Trump, who won the presidential election in the United States after a great struggle and was reelected as the president of the United States,” Erdogan wrote on X. Erdogan said he hoped that US-Turkish relations would strengthen under Trump's leadership, and that “regional and global crises and war, especially the Palestinian issue and the Russia-Ukraine war, will come to an end.”

Trump and Erdogan got along famously during Trump's first term in 2017-2021, despite occasional turbulence that was caused by the detention of the US pastor, Andrew Brunson, on bogus espionage and coup-plotting charges in the wake of the failed attempt to overthrow the Turkish president in 2016. The United States’ continued partnership with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces against the Islamic State was and remains another sore point — although Trump greenlit Turkey’s 2019 invasion of northeast Syria that led to US military sanctions on Ankara.

But such friction pales in comparison to Erdogan’s disdain for President Joe Biden, who was a vocal critic of the Turkish president’s autocratic ways before taking office. When he became president in 2021, Biden initially held Erdogan at arm's length but was obliged to court him following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Turkey refused to join in Western sanctions on Russia and dragged its feet on Sweden’s NATO membership. Yet its cooperation in barring Russian naval vessels from the Black Sea and providing drones to Ukraine have been pivotal in Western efforts to contain Russia.