[ 07 April 2015 05:15 ]
Baku-APA. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's one-day Iran visit on Tuesday aims to tap into business and trade opportunities in the aftermath of the interim nuclear agreement between Iran and major powers last week, APA reports quoting Xinhua.
Turkey has welcomed the agreement with Turkish Presidential Spokesperson Ibrahim Kalin saying on Monday Ankara expects business ties to grow after easing international sanctions on Iran.
"We are hoping the easing of sanctions will reflect on in a positive way," Kalin remarked, stressing that Turkey has long held economic ties with Iran.
He said Ankara has always supported the peaceful resolution to the nuclear disagreements.
Beril Dedeoglu, professor of international relations at Galatasaray University, said Ankara may find Iran more reasonable to develop economic ties rather than with countries like Libya, Syria or Yemen that will remain unstable for some time.
Noting that Turkey and Iran have a complex relationship, she said, "the new situation will reinforce both cooperation and rivalry between these two countries."
Erdogan's visit was planned long before the nuclear deal announced last week.
It was part of High Level Cooperation Council, an intergovernmental conference that was set up in January 2014. The first meeting was held in June last year when Iranian President Hassan Rohani visited Ankara on an official visit.
Both countries announced that a joint target of increasing bilateral trade to 30 billion U.S. dollars by 2015.
The trade volume between the two countries was recorded as 13.7 billion U.S. dollars in 2014, a decrease of six percent from 2013 figure, which was 14.6 billion dollars.
According to the Turkish government data, in the first two months of this year, the volume dropped an additional five-percentage points.
That makes the reaching the target volume of 30 billion U.S. dollars by the end of this year as an elusive figure.
