BY ZEYNEP GURCANLI
STAR- A number of projects, ones which concern Turkey very closely, are currently being in the works in Central Asia and the Far East. In fact, the focus of their designs is familiar: the Silk Road.
Late last month an international meeting in China discussed possible ways to revive the ancient Silk Road. The Beijing gathering was a turning point for these attempts. International work on this issue actually began eight years ago with the modest goal of opening historic sites on the Silk Road for tourist purposes. Towards this end, the World Tourism Organization started to restore roads, hotels and restaurants along the historic route. During this restoration phase, the International Roads Federation (IRF) decided to join in the project, which led to the improvement of its designs. After the IRF got involved, the scope of the project grew. Now the ultimate goal is to revive the road not just for tourists, but commercially.
The decisions of the Beijing meeting can be summarized as follows:
* To cooperate on establishing new Silk Road transportation corridors
* To take measures to facilitate cross-border trade
* To take measures to facilitate the cross-border movement of transportation and cargo vehicles.
A delegation headed by Highways Director General Hicabi Ece represented Turkey at the meeting. Turkey is lending its full support to the project because reviving the Silk Road would provide all the countries along its route with great commercial opportunities. In addition, the Silk Road would probably wake the ‘sleeping giant,’ namely China, and help it to integrate with European countries. Consequently, such an economic integration is expected to change China’s communist system as well, which is why the Beijing meeting was very important.
During such a period, a critical era for humanity seeing the re-election of US President George W. Bush, signaling that he will pursue an even more aggressive foreign policy, I’d like to at least hope that something will change for the better somewhere in the world…