Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey needed greater investments in technology and more democratic reforms to achieve targets the country set for 2023, when the country will celebrate the centennial of its founding, Anadolu Agency reported.
"If we are to achieve our goals for 2023, we need to focus on these two areas in which we have to be stronger and catch higher standards within the next decade," Erdogan told a general assembly meeting of Turkey's Foreign Economic Relations Board, or DEIK, in Istanbul.
Erdogan said DEIK had made major contributions in the development of Turkey's economy and in the country's increasing profile in the international and regional arenas, adding that the board had organized nearly 750 events in 2012 alone to "chase international business opportunities."
Erdogan said Turkey had opened 27 new embassies in the past decade to bring the total number of top Turkish diplomatic missions to 120, adding that the number of embassies in Africa rose to 34 from 12 in 2002.