ANTALYA - Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, commenting on Monday on the statements of Chief of General Staff Hilmi Ozkok, said, ''Turkey is a democratic, secular and social state of law and everything develops in a democratic process. It is meaningless to search for anything other than this.''
Erdogan held a press conference following his meeting with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and replied to questions about the meeting of Ozkok with representatives of newspapers in Ankara.
When a reporter said, ''there is an issue on the agenda for a few days. During the meeting, Ozkok said that uneasiness of young soldiers in the army was out of question and if there was an uneasiness, this could be in the whole army and the uneasiness stemmed from nomination of certain persons to certain positions'' and asked about his views, Erdogan said, ''look what I have explained you. I told you what was on the agenda. Look what you are talking about now. Turkey is a democratic, secular and social state of law and everything develops in a democratic process. It is meaningless to search for anything other than this.''
INCREASE TRADE VOLUME WITH KAZAKHSTAN
Erdogan said that they discussed the initiatives to be made to improve the relations.
They took up the ways to increase trade volume and possible joint investments that could be made in the third countries, Erdogan noted.
Erdogan expressed belief that they could get the fruitful results of their meeting soon.
Stating that the trade volume between the two countries had reached 500 million U.S. dollars in the previous years, Erdogan said that it fell almost to 200 million U.S. dollars but the economic relations started to recover as of 2002.
Turkish contracting companies had undertaken 2.5 billion U.S. dollars of investments in Kazakhstan, Erdogan pointed out.
Erdogan added that they decided to increase bilateral relations and trade with the steps the two countries would take together.
(BRC-ÖS) 26.05.2003