Turkey, Arab neighbors gear up for Mideast free trade zone

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, speaking after the meeting with his Arab counterparts on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meetings in New York, said the free trade zone was likely to be formally announced at a summit of leaders of the four countries, slated to take place in İstanbul in January. “We will declare at that summit that this economic zone is in effect,” Davutoğlu told reporters at a joint press conference on Saturday. “We hope that this is good news not only for these four countries but also for the entire region.” The four countries first agreed to set up a cooperation council “to develop a long-term strategic partnership” and “create a zone of free movement of goods and persons among our countries” during a meeting of foreign ministers on the sidelines of a Turkey-Arab cooperation forum in İstanbul in June. Since then, Turkey and Lebanon have signed a bilateral deal on free trade and abolished visa requirements, thus paving the way for future implementation of the free trade deal. In August, the trade ministers of the four countries met to review preparations for the implementation of the June deal.

Davutoğlu said the four-way cooperation will focus on four areas in the coming months: energy, trade, transportation and tourism. According to a scheme of division of labor, each country will be in charge of coordinating efforts in specific areas, with Turkey being tasked with cooperation in trade. In November, ministers of energy, trade, tourism and transportation will meet to review the efforts.

The planned free trade zone comes as Turkey takes steps to expand its ties with Middle Eastern neighbors and amid claims that Ankara's foreign policy priorities are shifting away from Western objectives.

Turkey’s bid to join the European Union is facing opposition from countries like France and Germany, which argue it is culturally different than the member states and that it should be offered a privileged partnership instead of full membership.

Turkey opened accession talks with the EU in 2005, but progress has been very slow since then. Ankara complained that preparations on several chapters were finished but the EU refused to open talks on them due to political obstruction raised by certain member countries.

Davutoğlu, speaking after the June deal, had dismissed suggestions that Turkey’s expanding links with the Middle Eastern neighbors represented a search for an alternative to its troubled EU membership bid, saying Turkey remains committed to its EU process. Trade between Turkey and Arab countries has doubled over the past five years, but despite that rapid growth, trade with the Arab world still represents a tiny proportion of its trade with Europe.

On Saturday, the foreign minister also reiterated that the agreement to create a free trade zone was not an exclusive one, saying it was open to all friendly countries in the region. “They could be full members or join on a sectoral or project basis,” he said.

Jordan’s foreign minister, Nasser Judeh, said the four areas presented wide opportunities for cooperation and added that the regional cooperation vision also required participation from other countries in the region.

The June deal says the planned free trade zone will be based on “existing bilateral agreements and practices on free trade and visa exemption” between the parties. Davutoğlu dismissed immediate plans to create an institutional basis for the four-way cooperation. When asked whether there were plans to establish a secretariat, he said the priority now was the actions to be taken, not the structure. “We will act, not just talk,” he said.

The foreign minister also said the cooperation model would be a unique one, reflecting the shared history of the four nations participating in it. Asked whether it would be modeled on the EU, he said: “The EU is of course a good model of cooperation and we can look into it. But this cooperation, after all, is a product of our history.”

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said cooperation offered huge opportunities for an uninterrupted connection among nations from Saudi Arabia to London. İstanbul and Damascus, the Syrian capital, are already connected via railway, he said, and the same railway reaches Amman, Jordan. Now, when Turkey’s planned undersea Marmaray tunnel is completed, that same railway will reach London and maybe one day it will go as far as Mecca, Saudi Arabia, providing an uninterrupted link between the two cities.