Saturday, June 7, 2014

Rouhani to visit Turkey to strengthen ties

Erdogan and Khamenei
Rouhani is due to visit Turkey on Monday to improve the bilateral ties between the two countries.

His first visit to Turkey as president will also mark the first visit an Iranian president has made to Turkey since President Rafsanjani did back in 1996. (Zee News, June 7)

Rouhani is expected to sign at least six new agreements aimed at improving cultural, economic and political ties.


The visit will last two-days. According to a government press release both Rouhani and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will hold the first meeting of the Iran-Turkey Cooperation Council. (Fars News, June 7)

In the first two months of this year trade has increased.

When he visited Iran last January Erdogan has said that the two countries are now seeking to work together and try and increase their annual trade to about $30 billion.

According to the Turkish statistics agency trade between Iran and Turkey declined 35% between 2012 and 2013. This is partially due to the fact that relations between the two countries were damaged by their differing policies on Syria.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

relations will remained distant as Turkey's need to market its manufactures lead Turkey's foreign policy into pursuing close ties with the Arab states and position Turkey as a rival to Iran's attempt to woo the Arabs and export Khomeinism

Anonymous said...

Turkey is getting some profitable business by helping Iran with easing the sanctions. The moment the sanctions are over for Iran, Turkey will lose very profitable transactions. The total revenue of business with Iran is significant, but the profit margin is just amazing and Turkish businessmen know that easy money cannot be found somewhere else. As such they are having a dual stance with regards to Iran sanctions, at one hand the removal will make business transaction with Iran easy but at the other hand Turkey will lose its unique status as the sole provider of goods and services to Iran's market in the region.