Visit signals ‘happy end’ to FTA talks with South Korea
Today’s Zaman, Istanbul
Visit signals ‘happy end’ to FTA talks with South Korea
5 February 2012
Deliberations to ink a free trade agreement (FTA) with Turkey will “soon” conclude successfully, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak told reporters in İstanbul on Saturday, signaling that talks which have been ongoing for almost two years between the two countries will finally yield fruit.
Lee arrived in Turkey on Saturday as part of a week-long tour that also includes Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates at a time that South Korea is seeking to diversify oil imports in the face of US and European sanctions targeting Iranian oil exports.
Hoping to bring down trade barriers between the two G-20 members, Turkey and South Korea have been in talks for an FTA since April 2010. The two have finalized three rounds of talks so far with no conclusion reached. Reading between the lines of Lee’s words on Saturday, his current visit will likely see the talks brought to a , observers argue.
The South Korean president said on Saturday that businessmen from his country were eager to make use of the business potential in Turkey. “Turkey is one of the fastest growing countries through global economic fluctuations and there is great potential to develop economic relations between the two countries,” he noted during Saturday’s business council meeting. Lee was accompanied by Economy Minister Zafer Çağlayan, who stressed that the Turkish government expected trade with South Korea “to grow in a balanced way.”
“Turkey’s exports to South Korea are worth $500 million, while we buy products worth more than $6 billion annually. … An FTA could be beneficial to maintaining the balance in this regard,” he argued.
Çağlayan said Turkey was ready to sign the FTA and was waiting for the South Korean government to finalize its preparations. Lee met with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Sunday in İstanbul and is due to meet his Turkish counterpart, Abdullah Gül, today in Ankara. The two presidents have a wide range of issues to discuss, which include the possible joint construction of a nuclear power plant in Turkey and sanctions on Iran.
Turkey plans to build two power plants, one in Akkuyu on the Mediterranean coast and another in Sinop on the Black Sea coast. Having agreed with Russia on the construction of the Akkuyu power plant, Turkey had talks with Japan to reach an agreement on building a second nuclear power plant on the Black Sea, but the talks were suspended after an accident occurred at a Japanese nuclear power plant in the wake of an earthquake-triggered tsunami that hit the country in March of last year. In 2010, South Korea and Turkey held intense negotiations on a $20 billion project to build four nuclear reactors on Turkey’s Black Sea coast. But the negotiations were suspended after the sides failed to work out key differences. Prospects emerged for resumption of these talks when Erdoğan asked South Korea to participate in the nuclear power plant project during a meeting with Lee on the sidelines of a G-20 summit in Cannes in November. Korean media quoted government officials on Saturday as saying the chances for progress in the stalled negotiations for a nuclear power plant “are not high because differences between the two countries are too large.”
