Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 27
By Orkhan Quluzade – Trend:
Turkey intends to bring the volume of trade turnover with Azerbaijan to $15 billion by 2023, new Turkish Ambassador to Azerbaijan Erkan Ozoral said in an exclusive interview with Trend.
The diplomat said that this is one of the main objectives of Turkey.
The ambassador said that Turkey and Azerbaijan have very deep fraternal ties.
“We have been strengthening these ties for the last 25 years, since the day Azerbaijan regained independence,” said the ambassador. “The task entrusted to us as diplomats is to continuously develop these ties and relations based on the highest official level.”
The diplomat said that for 25 years, Turkey and Azerbaijan jointly implemented such large-scale projects as the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipeline and the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline.
“Now our task is to implement such projects as the construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway and the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP),” the ambassador said.
“The most important task among those put before us is to complete all the work in the shortest possible time and commission these facilities,” he added.
Ozoral emphasized that during his term, he will spare no efforts to carry out assigned tasks.
The ambassador thinks that there is more need to develop cultural and humanitarian ties between Turkey and Azerbaijan.
“Citizens of Turkey and Azerbaijan have very close and sincere feelings for each other, and we would like to contribute to further rapprochement of our countries’ citizens through activities in the cultural sphere,” he noted.
Currently, Turkey is one of Azerbaijan’s main foreign trade partners, according to Azerbaijani State Customs Committee.
Trade turnover between the two countries amounted to $1.67 billion (with a share of 13.13 percent) in January-September 2016.
Turkey ranks the second in terms of the volume of export and import operations: goods worth $842.2 million, with a specific weight of 12.88 percent, were exported from Azerbaijan and Turkish goods worth $830.8 million (13.4 percent) were imported by Azerbaijan.
The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway is being constructed on the basis of the Georgian-Azerbaijani-Turkish intergovernmental agreement. It is planned to be commissioned by late 2016.
The peak capacity of the railway will be 17 million tons of cargo per year. At the initial stage, this figure will be one million passengers and 6.5 million tons of cargo.
Azerbaijan allocated a loan of $775 million for the construction of the railway's Georgian section. SOFAZ finances the project in accordance with the Azerbaijani president's decree 'On the implementation of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars project activities', dated Feb. 21, 2007.
TANAP project envisages transportation of gas of Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz field from the Georgian-Turkish border to the western borders of Turkey. Turkey will get gas in 2018 and after completing the construction of Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), gas will be delivered to Europe in early 2020.
After TANAP’s construction, Azerbaijan will become the second gas supplier of the Turkish market ahead of Iran.
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