By Sudeshna Sarkar, IANS
Istanbul : Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Gul is to visit India, underlining the increasing importance Turkey is attaching to bettering ties with Asia .
Gul is also foreign minister and was the leading candidate for the aborted 11th presidential election this year.
Hasan Gogus, former Turkish ambassador to India and current director-general for multilateral affairs at the Turkish ministry of foreign affairs, said the two governments are discussing a mutually convenient date for Gul's visit.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the last Indian prime minister to go to Turkey on an official visit – in 2003.
The first high-level visit between the two countries started in 1960 with then Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru making the trip. The last visit from Turkey was in 2000 when then prime minister Bulent Ecevit went to India.
"The visit will review bilateral cooperation, especially in the economic field," Gogus said. "The volume of trade between India and Turkey is growing very rapidly. In the 1980s, it was around $300-400 million. But by mid-2000, it had jumped to $1.5 billion."
Gogus also said that Indian companies were now showing keenness to invest in Turkey.
By this year, Turkey's export volume is expected to cross $100 billion while imports reach $150 billion. According to Kursad Tuzmen, state minister of Turkey, in a bid to promote trade, his country allows direct foreign investment and treats local and foreign companies equally.
"In Turkey, you can set up a company in a day," Tuzmen said.
The Indian Oil Corp has applied to the Energy Market Regulatory Authority of Turkey for setting up a 15-million-tonne, $6-billion grassroots refinery at the Mediterranean port city, Ceyhan.
It is also negotiating with a consortium of ENI, Italy, and Calik Group of Turkey for participating in the $1.5-billion oil pipeline from the Turkish Northern Black Sea city Samsun to Ceyhan. The 550-km pipeline will carry up to 1.5 million barrels of crude per day primarily from Kazakhstan and will replace the tanker movements through the Bosphorus straits by almost 50 percent.
The Indian government too has inked a memorandum of understanding with Turkey for cooperation in the field of oil and natural gas.
Turkey and India have also agreed to set up a joint working group on combating terrorism.
"Even before 9/11, Turkey was drawing attention to the necessity of international cooperation to combat terrorism," Gogus said. "One country alone can't cope with terrorism. Both India and Turkey have been victims of terrorism."
Though the two countries do not share a common boundary, Gogus said they still were neighbours since they shared the same values of "rule of law, democracy and secularisation". Turkey, he added, shared good relations with both India and Pakistan without one tie affecting the other.
Turkey goes to the polls on July 22 amidst speculation as to whether in the event of the ruling Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) winning a second five-year term, it would lead to restrictions and have an effect on Turkey's international policies. Gogus rules out such fears.
"Turkey has been a secular country," he says. "The principles of secularism are enshrined in the constitution. They can't be amended."