TEHRAN - State Minister Kursad Tuzmen said on Wednesday that Turkey and Iran were two friend and neighbor countries which had been living together in peace for centuries and had determined the destiny of region throughout history.
Making a speech in a seminar on improvement of commercial and economic cooperation between Turkey and Iran, Tuzmen said that east-west trade via two countries contributed to transfer of different cultures and values, besides economic aspects, and thus to cultural richness of two countries.
Tuzmen said, ''today, development of economic and commercial cooperation between Iran and Turkey, which are important economic powers of region, will have big contribution to stability and happiness of not only their own people, but also nations in the region.''
Noting that relations between Iran and Turkey, which had nearly 2-3 billion dollars of trade volume, were good, Tuzmen said that bringing peace and tranquility to Middle East would be possible with increasing prosperity of people in the region and regional countries' catching a sustainable development trend.
Tuzmen said, ''acting with this view, we have been fulfilling the strategy of developing trade with neighbor and surrounding countries since 2000. With these activities, our foreign trade volume with neighbor countries has reached to 50 percent in 2003. We have increased the share of our neighbors from three percent to 15 percent in our total export. Our target in a close period is to increase this share to 30 percent.''
Noting that Turkey would be among the 20 countries with biggest amount of export in the world in case it exceeded 40 billion dollars of export, Tuzmen said that Turkey aimed to become one of the biggest ten countries of the world with 100 billion dollars of export in 2010. He added, ''a sustainable export increase requires import increase as well. Turkey especially has to import nearly all of its raw material and energy input. When property groups that Turkey needs are taken into consideration, Iran will be the country which will have the biggest share from our increase in import.''
Tuzmen said that Turkish and Iranian economies had complementary elements in many aspects and transportation between two countries could be provided easily, but it was necessary to recover and diversify transportation infrastructure. He added that Turkey needed Iran for opening to Central Asia and Iran needed Turkey for opening to Europe, and Turkey and Iran were a big potential for cooperation with third countries.
Tuzmen said that purchase of natural gas from Iran would rapidly increase in coming years and thus, trade deficit which was bad for Turkey would increase to higher levels.
Tuzmen recalled that trade volume between two countries, which was 2.5 billion dollars in 1980s, decreased to 600 million dollars in 1990s. He said that they envisioned to increase trade volume between two countries to 2.2 billion dollars in the end of year.
Noting that international conjuncture was affecting the developing countries such as Turkey and Iran, Tuzmen said that solidarity between countries such as Turkey and Iran by increasing cooperation and trade would be more effective against those conjunctures instead of their resistance alone.
Tuzmen said that liberalization of Iranian economy was a true step and carrying on this process would increase the interest of Turkish companies to Iranian market. He added that he believed that concrete steps would be taken in fulfilling free trade centers and preferential trade system in joint trade committee meetings to be held during Iran visit. He said that Turkish and Iranian businessmen had important responsibilities in developing commercial and economic relations between two countries.
(GC-AÖ) 01.10.2003