Turkish State Minister Says Crisis Can Also Be An Opportunity For Renewal

IZMIR - Turkish State Minister Cevdet Yilmaz said that crisis was not only a source of problems, it could also be a significant opportunity to make new initiatives, resolve structural problems and renew itself.
Making opening remarks of the 25th meeting of the Follow-up Committee of the Standing Committee for Economic and Commercial Cooperation of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (COMCEC) in the southern Turkish province of Izmir, Yilmaz said, "although Turkey has also been affected by the global crisis, its trade volume with the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC)-member countries increased 50 percent to 61.8 billion USD in 2008 from 41.8 billion USD in 2007. We consider OIC-member countries our commercial partners and we are determined to further improve our economic and commercial relations with them."

Referring to impacts of the global crisis, Yilmaz said, "we need to take urgent measures to prevent the economic crisis from further deepening poverty and turning into a humanitarian crisis."

He also highlighted importance of cooperation to decrease impacts of the crisis to the minimum.