‘Zero problems, maximum trade’ becomes reality at TUSKON summit

Hosting 2,200 foreign businesspeople from 135 countries, as well as 2,300 businesspeople from Turkey, in İstanbul, the summit proved to be a success story that greatly contributed to the country’s vision of building friendly and strong political and economic relations with the rest of the world.

As tradesmen from around the globe shook hands at an estimated 100,000 pre-planned business meetings, the world has become a safer planet for all, as Thomas Friedman argued in his book, “The Lexus and the Olive Tree,” on how globalization has contributed to world peace, pointing out how the spread of a particular transnational company has coincided with an internally peaceful zone. What Friedman noted is that “[n]o two countries that both had a McDonald’s had fought a war against each other, since each got its McDonald’s.” Likewise, last week’s TUSKON summit enabled businesspeople to make similar connections in İstanbul, one of today’s most populated metropolises and which, according to Napoleon Bonaparte, would be the world’s capital if the world were a single state.

TUSKON contributing to stability in Iraq

War-torn Iraq was represented by the Federation of Iraqi Chambers of Commerce, the largest business organization in the country. Confirming the contribution of trade relations, established thanks to the TUSKON event, its director, Abdul Salam Alqaysi, told Sunday’s Zaman that agreements signed by their members in İstanbul will also help ensure their homeland’s stability. “We established some business connections with Turkey in the post-war era on our own, too, but TUSKON’s contribution to revitalizing the trade between Turkey and Iraq cannot be underestimated here,” he said.

The summit came at a time when Turkey has started to pursue an inclusive and re-energized foreign policy, since the early 2000s, easing tensions with long-standing adversaries and strengthening ties with the outside world, starting first with its neighboring states. As part of this strategy, visa requirements have been mutually eliminated with a group of countries, including Russia, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Libya, and Qatar, over the last two years. Meanwhile, negotiations for full membership in the EU were launched in 2005 and have advanced since then, despite certain political obstacles put before Turkey by several EU members. Within the same time frame, Turkey has spearheaded the enthusiastic Alliance of Civilizations initiative with Spain and has also been elected to the United Nations Security Council, holding a non-permanent seat in 2009 and 2010, as its constructive foreign policy approach bore fruit.

The large TUSKON summit began with the İstanbul Foreign Trade Ministers Summit on Monday, attended by 30 ministers, and an official inauguration ceremony held on Tuesday. For the following two days, participant foreign businesspeople visited the booths of 398 Turkish exhibitor companies and listened to several country presentations, as well as conducting tête-à-tête and business match-making meetings with their Turkish counterparts. Though hard to document in the short term, initial reports about the monetary value of agreements signed during those meetings indicate that the organizing party’s expectations of a $7 billion aggregate trade volume were not a dream. TUSKON’s guests were later taken to 62 Anatolian provinces so that they could explore business opportunities in Anatolia as well.

Trade bridge sign of change in Turkey

Speaking to Sunday’s Zaman, Sri Lankan Allied Trading International Ltd. General Manager Haafiz Ifthikar Ahmed, one of the participants in the Turkey-World Trade Bridge summit, said on the sidelines of the meeting that Turkey had special meaning neither for the East nor for the West a decade ago, but that the situation has “completely” changed today. “This change is obvious. Just look around now. People of different civilizations, thousands of them, have come together in this place. As a Sri Lankan Muslim, I always liked Turkey, but I have never felt like this before. Turkey is now an indispensable partner for both the East and the West,” he noted.

Walter Freiberg, the owner of German chemical industry company Rabbasol-Chemie, also told Sunday’s Zaman that it was “so impressive” to see Turkey putting its signature on such an immense event. “Well, it is not the US or China organizing this event. It is Turkey rising as a truly functioning bridge between different cultures some say were bound to clash with each other in the past,” he argued, adding that the EU should notice the country’s potential and avoid derailing Turkey from the track to become part of the EU by employing an inconsistent discourse.