ISTANBUL 

Türkiye has the opportunity to be “at the table” with the EU amid trade wars, change of the US administration, tensions and geopolitical conflicts, the head of the Turkish Foreign Economic Relations Board (DEIK) said at a recent news conference.

“Türkiye has a bilateral trade volume of $327 billion with the EU and it is a fairly balanced process,” said Nail Olpak, president of DEIK.

Olpak said DEIK considers the rapidly changing global agenda’s effect on the economy and carefully analyzes world events to make its analysis.

“Additionally, Europe needs to make a number of strategic decisions following the change in its own administration and the bloc allocated budgets for that project framework,” he said.

He emphasized that a lot has changed over the years, now countries like Saudi Arabia and Syria have come to the fore, with the end of the Baathist regime and the rising prevalence of Saudi Arabia against the United Arab Emirates.

“We believe it is right to turn our attention to more focused areas, where we had fewer issues at the time,” he noted. “While we have a fairly balanced bilateral trade with the EU, there are areas with this process we are not satisfied with, the visa issue being one of the primary ones.”

“There has been some progress with upgrading the Türkiye-EU Customs Union, but we do not find it to be enough,” he said. “There have been some meetings that were suspended due to the crisis in the Eastern Mediterranean.”

Olpak stated that the Türkiye-EU high-level economic dialogue has been suspended for some time. “Over the past two years, the EU adopted a diplomatic stance, which we are calling ‘the high-level trade freeze,’ but we have had some positive developments recently,” he noted.

Mehmet Ali Yalcindag, chairperson of DEIK’s Türkiye-Europe Business Councils, said the situation between the EU and Türkiye poses a historic opportunity.

Yalcindag said he recently traveled to Italy to attend a DEIK meeting with the participation of 600 businesspeople. He noted Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan invited as many businesspeople as possible to join him in Italy.

“The target discussed was $40 billion and the meeting was very friendly and courteous -- we need to do this for all European countries,” he said. “We believe Turkish businesspeople should visit Italy, Germany, France, and Spain each twice a year to hold similar meetings.”

He noted that US President Donald Trump “disrupted the table” when he was discussing Europe, and “the meetings in Moscow were all about how this table could be reshaped and who would sit where.”

“We told our European friends that they need to figure out where they will sit at this table, to take initiative on this issue and not wait,” he said.

“The US represents 4% of the world population and it’s currently the leading power with an economy of around $28 trillion but when you look at the EU, the bloc has a combined economy of $20 trillion with less than half of the US’ population.”

“We can’t stand by and wait for our turn, so we tell Europe: ‘Take Türkiye with you to the table, reshape your position at the table, and show them that you are there, and no one can remove you’ – this is what we have to do,” he added.