Turkey plans alternative routes for exports, bypassing Syria

Turkey is mulling alternative transit trade routes on its southern border via Iraq, taking the ongoing turmoil in Syria into account, Transportation, Maritime and Communications Minister Binali Yıldırım said Tuesday in Ankara. He added that the government is working on plans to open new border gates with Iraq in case security problems in Syria worsen.

Mehmet Büyükekşi, president of Turkish Exporters Assembly (TİM), is also optimistic about Turkey's capacity for finding alternative routes if things deteriorate in Syria. “Turkey has had the experience of the former Yugoslavia in the '90s, and was successful in continuing its export through alternative channels,” he told Today's Zaman.

In the meantime trade with Syria has decreased in recent months and is expected to drop further since Turkey declared its own embargo plan to supplement the Arab League’s sweeping embargo decision last week. “The trade volume has decreased by 20 percent since July,” said Doğan Narin, president of the Turkish-Arab Countries Businessmen’s Association (TURAB). In his statement to the Anatolian News Agency, he added that if sanctions go into effect, the decrease would hit 50 percent.

Güriş Holding, the biggest Turkish investor in Syria, which began construction of its third cement plant in Syria at the beginning of 2011, has stopped its new investment, worth 285 million euros, following the clashes there. Tarık Aygün, deputy general manager of the firm, told Today’s Zaman that the company’s two cement grinding mills in Syria, built in 2009 and 2010, now work at a capacity of only 5 percent because of the decrease in demand, which is a result of the unrest in the country.

The decrease in trade has been sharply felt in the transportation industry as well. Since Syria is not only a budding market for Turkish exports, but also a transit country for Turkish trucks heading for countries in the Arabian Peninsula, Jordan and Lebanon, the decrease seems to have been felt even more strongly in the transportation sector. Fulya Özdemir, Hatay representative of the International Transporters’ Association (UND), has told Today’s Zaman that Turkish drivers in Hatay province, which borders Syria, don’t want to travel to Syria since a Turkish truck driver was killed in Syria last August.

Due to the armed clashes in Syria, more than half of the transportation firms in the region don’t want to send drivers there. “As exports to and through Syria have diminished, the hiring price for trucks has also fallen significantly. Since the demand on trucks is low, there are transportation companies trying to sell some of their trucks. On the other hand, for those exporters who would like to send goods to the region, the price of transportation has risen by about 20-30 percent because of the risks involved. “A regional firm that used to send at least 12 trucks to Syria a week, now sends only 3-4 at most,” she added, describing the situation in the transportation sector in the Hatay region.

Local merchants are more worried about the loss of trade over the border with Syria. Mehmet Ali Mutafoğlu, deputy president of the Akteks textile company based in Gaziantep, another province neighboring Syria, has told Today’s Zaman that he believed sanctions would hurt Turkey more than Syria, Syria also being the transit country for Turkish exports. Mutafoğlu, who owns a textile factory near Aleppo which works with at capacity, also thinks that restriction on Turkish banks regarding trade with Syria would work to the detriment of the Turkish side because “the Syrians are used to doing business outside of the banking system.”

Iraq has been a troublesome route for Turkish transporters, where gangs have killed nearly 80 Turkish drivers in recent years. That’s why Mutafoğlu doubts whether additional border gates to Iraq would solve the problem of the transporters. “Are you going to drive through Felluce? Who knows what will happen in Iraq after the American leave the country,” he said.

The trouble Syria has been going through has also negatively effected trade in neighboring Gaziantep province, with exports to Syria decreasing by 15 percent in the first 10 months of 2011 in comparison to the same period in 2010, the total figure being $120 million last year. But Gaziantep was also a center of attraction for Syrians who used to come to do their shopping and spend the weekend. In the shopping malls and on the streets, Arabs and cars with Arabic plates were an ordinary sight, but as Syrians started to arrive in Hatay in summer and were settled in tents there by Turkish authorities, the number of visitors from Syria has radically diminished, said Mutafoğlu. Doğan Narin also noted that trade has been hurt in provinces neighboring Syria such as Hatay, Gaziantep, Kilis and Şanlıurfa and would be more deeply affected by eventual sanctions Turkey is planning to put in place.

The trade volume between Turkey and Syria was $2.5 billion in 2010, of which $1.8 billion was Turkey’s exports.

Turkey is expected to follow the Arab League in imposing sanctions on Syria, with which it has an 800-km border. But Yıldırım: “Turkey’s priority is to make sure that the Syrian people do not become victims of the sanctions. We don’t want to see Syrians and bilateral trade hurt.” Touching on the possibility of conducting trade over Egypt by Ro-Ro ships in case an embargo is imposed on Syria, Yıldırım said that the issue of establishing Ro-Ro lines between Mersin and Alexandria had come up before the Syrian crisis, but that he did not believe the shipping between Turkey and Egypt would be a proper alternative to Syria for Turkey’s exports. Taner Yıldız, Minister of Energy, also announced today that electricity Turkey was providing to Syria would not be part of the sanctions.