ASEAN deal expected to lead to full potential in ties with Turkey

Late last month, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu signed a deal on Turkey’s accession to ASEAN’s Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC) in Vietnam, where a meeting of the ASEAN Regional Forum, a group comprising the 10 ASEAN nations in addition to 17 others, took place. “Accession to the treaty marks a historic step in Turkey’s process of opening up to the Southeast Asian-Pacific region,” a statement from the Turkish Foreign Ministry said. “Thus, our country has established, for the first time, an institutional relationship and has the opportunity to further deepen its political, economic and cultural ties with the region.”

Turkey’s efforts to build institutional ties with ASEAN date back to 1999, but it was in 2008 that they gained momentum when Turkey formally expressed its readiness to accede to the TAC in a letter to the Foreign Ministry of Thailand, which chaired ASEAN activities that year.

“Turkey is a member of the G-20, the 17th largest economy of the world, a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and a country with an important location connecting two continents -- Europe and Asia,” Ambassador Lap first noted when asked in an interview with Today’s Zaman to assess the aforementioned development and its probable impacts on relations between Turkey and the region as well as on relations between Vietnam and Turkey.

“This important development will contribute to the further strengthening and the consolidation of friendship and cooperative relations with full potential between Turkey and ASEAN member countries, especially Vietnam as a chairman of ASEAN in 2010,” Lap added.

ASEAN was founded in 1967 and currently comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The TAC, ASEAN’s founding pact of non-aggression, was signed in 1976. It was amended on Dec. 15, 1987, by a protocol to open the document to accession by states outside Southeast Asia. China joined the TAC in 2003, being the first country outside the region to accede. A number of countries have also taken part in the TAC, including India, Japan and Pakistan, among others; the US joined last year, while the European Union is currently in the process of joining.

ASEAN spans an area of about 4.5 million square kilometers with a population of approximately 580 million people, or 8.7 percent of the world’s population.

As for bilateral relations between Vietnam and Turkey, Ambassador Lap believes these relations are increasingly being developed in various fields, such as in the diplomatic, political and, especially, economic field.

Gül invites Vietnamese president to Turkey

Vietnamese Vice President Nguyen Thi Doan’s visit to Turkey to attend the third summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA), held in İstanbul in June 2010, is a landmark example of the development in relations, Lap argued.

During the summit, along with Iraq, Vietnam joined as member country of CICA and raised the number of members to 22.

Lap noted that Doan and Turkish President Abdullah Gül had a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the CICA summit.

“During the talks, the vice president of Vietnam highly appreciated Turkey’s important role in the region and congratulated Turkey on being the new president of the CICA. She attached importance to promoting multifaceted relations between Vietnam and Turkey and their sharing experience in the field of tourism and working to establish direct flights between the two countries. The two leaders expressed satisfaction with the current developments in bilateral relations and hope that the relations continue to be further strengthened. Turkey’s President Gül spoke highly of Vietnam’s role in ASEAN. President Gül also invited Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet to pay a state visit to Turkey,” Lap explained during the interview with Today’s Zaman.

Listing recently and mutually paid and planned official visits between the two countries and figures displaying a concrete development in bilateral trade, Ambassador Lap expressed his confidence in having better multifaceted cooperative relations between Vietnam and Turkey.

At the invitation of Industry and Trade Minister Nihat Ergün, Vietnamese Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Nguyen Thanh Bien will visit Turkey to attend an international fair and attend the Vietnamese-Turkish Business Forum, to be held in İzmir on Aug. 26-27. The fifth meeting of the Vietnam-Turkey Joint Commission will be held in Hanoi in November of this year.

Rıfat Hisarcıklıoğlu, the president of the Turkish Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges (TOBB), visited Vietnam in late October 2009 to attend the Vietnam-Turkey Business Forum, contributing to promoting trade ties between the two countries, Lap said.

“The Association of Social and Economic Solidarity with Pacific Countries [PASİAD] also plays a role as a bridge in promoting the relations between the two countries. Hanoi People’s Committee Chairman Nguyen The Thao has invited Ankara Mayor Melih Gökçek to visit Vietnam in October to attend the ceremony of the 1,000th year anniversary of Thang Long [Hanoi]. Beautiful natural places in Vietnam such as Ha Long Bay now attract more and more tourists from Turkey. The Vietnamese Embassy in Ankara plans to open a traditional painting exhibition in Ankara in the coming months to let the Turkish people know more about Vietnamese culture,” he said.

“In 2009 bilateral trade volume gained $426.07 million, in which Vietnam’s exports to Turkey were $281.87 million and imports from Turkey were $144.20 million. In the first five months of 2010, Turkey’s exports to Vietnam were nearly $60 million, increasing by 94 percent compared to the same period of last year, and Vietnam’s exports to Turkey amounted to $295 million, increasing by 85 percent compared to the same period of 2009,” Lap explained.

“In the first six months of 2010, as part of cooperation projects with international organizations, Vietnam sent a delegation led by the deputy governor of the State Bank of Vietnam and a delegation of officials from Vietnam’s Finance Ministry to visit and work in Turkey to gain experience in bank systems and financial and monetary policy. In the political arena, we must mention a political consultative meeting between the two foreign ministries that was held in January 2010. An action plan for the promotion of cooperative relations between the two countries was agreed upon at the meeting.”

From multifaceted cooperation to partnership

Vietnam and Turkey established diplomatic relations in June 1978, and Turkey opened an embassy in Hanoi in December 1997. Vietnam launched its commercial office in İstanbul in October 1999, its consulate general in İstanbul in July 2002 and its embassy in Ankara in October 2003.

The two countries, which celebrated the 30th anniversary of their diplomatic relations in 2008, have signed many bilateral cooperation agreements over the last three decades. The agreements include the Agreement on Commercial, Economic and Technical Cooperation; the Agreement on Visa Exemptions for Diplomatic Passports; the Agreement on Cultural, Scientific and Educational Cooperation; the Agreement on Tourism Cooperation; and the Agreement on Fighting International Terrorism and Organized Crime.

When asked about his expectations regarding the future of bilateral relations both in the short and medium term, Ambassador Lap sounded highly optimistic.

“In the future, multifaceted cooperative relations between Vietnam and Turkey will be very good. In the short term, the two countries will exchange high-ranking visits of the leaders of both sides to discuss great directions for the development of friendship and multifaceted cooperative relations.

Vietnam and Turkey will try to conclude negotiations to sign two important agreements -- one on double tax avoidance and one on stimulation and protection of investment -- in 2010 to bring a legal framework to economic, commercial and investment cooperation, promote trade ties and raise the bilateral trade volume to $1 billion in the coming year. In the medium term, on the basis of available multifaceted cooperation and friendship and the tendency of more effective cooperation, the two countries will be able to raise current relations to the level of partnership relations,” Lap said.