Czechoslovakia and Turkey established diplomatic relations in 1924. How are the relations between our countries today, after almost a hundred years? We talked about this briefly with Egemen Bağış, the Turkish Ambassador to the Czech Republic.
How would you assess the current state of political, economic and cultural relations between Czechia and Turkey?
I was appointed as the new Ambassador of the Republic of Turkey to the Czech Republic around this time last year. My wife Beyhan, our daughter Ecehan and I love living and serving in Prague. After having served as a Member of the Parliament for fourteen years and as a Cabinet Minister for 5 years, this is an honour and a privilege for us. We are able to use our cumulative life experience acquired within and outside our country from non-governmental organizations, political entities and parties; the legislative and executive bodies of our government, our universities and academic platforms as well as various private sector organizations. It is really an honour to represent our country in the golden city of Prague that lies in the heart of Europe, and in a country like Czechia where the founder of modern Turkey Atatürk also lived (in Karlovy Vary), and healed after he’d been wounded and became a veteran. Turkey has the desire to develop our mutual relations even further in all areas.
Where do you see the main possibilities for further development of our relations? In what specific areas / projects?
In February 2013, we targetted bilateral trade volume of 5 billion USD. The average trade volume has been 3.5 billion USD during the last 7 years, which is a great indicator for achievability of our target. Also, our bilateral trade has been increasing despite the limitations caused by global obstacles. For example, Skoda Automobiles achieved 26% sales increase in Turkey in 2019. My priority along with all my colleagues at the Embassy will be to set new goals with the aim of fulfilling our national goal to increase the cooperation between Turkey and Czechia in the areas of energy, security, defence, tourism, culture, and education; all of which have considerable cooperation potential in our respective countries. The fact that Turkey is one of the top tourist destinations for Czechs, and that the Czech Republic is one of the most preferred countries for Turkish students regarding exchange programmes, only reinforce our hope to strengthen the bond between our nations. We will use every chance we get to underline the importance of the Visegrád Group, putting forward our best efforts to advance the cooperation. We are making every effort to sustain and strengthen the support of Czechia for Turkey’s membership in the EU and to increase the cooperation between the two nations under the NATO umbrella, while trying to contribute to lasting global peace. As the founding President of Czechia Vaclav Havel asserted, “we shall work for these goals because they are good, not just because they stand a chance to succeed.” Some of the highlights of our bilateral relations during the last year are; Prime Minister Babis‘ a very successful working visit to Ankara and Istanbul, PPF Group’s Skoda Transportations having bought shares and becoming the managing partner of TEMSA, which is a very prominent Turkish bus manufacturer; Energo-Pro led by Mr. Jaromír Tesař having invested by building four hydropower energy plants in Turkey and two of which have already become operational; two Czech citizens who were in Turkish custody have been released as a result of the persistent follow up by Prime Minister Babis and President Erdoğan, which led to increased cooperation in the security, intelligence and justice branches of our respective governments. What is more, we have witnessed greater cooperation among our representatives in international organizations, which resulted in the election of many Turkish and Czech candidates to several global positions. And, there has been a great sense of solidarity and cooperation in the fight against COVID, illegal immigration and terrorism.
Are there any planned events promoting commercial, economic and cultural relations between Turkey and Czechia?
Having lived away from home for 17 years, when me and my wife lived in the United States during our teenage and young adult years, we got into volunteering, lobbying and working profesionally as members of the local diaspora community. As a natural outcome of this, we are trying to give the utmost care to the support and cooperation to our loyal, faithful and patriotic citizens, who reside in Czechia and serve as a natural bridge between the homeland of their ancestors and their new home country. In order to serve this community to the best of our abilities, we frequently meet them, always with the awareness that their concerns are ours as well. In addition to the existing Turkish Czech NGO’s like Kitap – Turkic Association in Prague), Fenerbahce Fans and Joint Chamber of Commerce I have motivated our community to establish various NGOs to unite Turkish business professionals in Czechia, to organize cultural and art events, to promote industrial and trade cooperation, to organize weekend Turkish language courses for kids and night classes for adults and establish associations in major cities like Brno, Ostrava, Pilsen, etc. We were going to organize an annual Turkish festival in Prague to promote our cultural richnesses which we had to be cancelled due to covid 19, but we are hopeful to fulfil this goal in June this year. Also, I would like to establish sister city relationships between Turkish and Czech cities and towns. I plan to visit different regions of the Czech Republic in order to meet both elected local government and business community leaders in order to establish ties with their Turkish counterparts. I believe tourism is an important sector for our citizens to make the ties strong and flourish. Moreover, we will try to increase flights among our major airports. And, last but not least; we are going to be motivating our respective business communities to attend trade fairs for various sectors.
CV BOX
Egemen Bağış is the Ambassador of Turkey to the Czech Republic.
He is a former Turkish politician, former Member of the Turkish Parliament, and the former Minister for EU Affairs and chief Negotiator of Turkey in accession talks with the European Union.
He also formerly served as the President of the Federation of Turkish American Associations, the New York-based umbrella organization of Turkish-Americans.
Egemen Bağış was born in Bingöl, Turkey, in 1970. He holds a degree of Bachelor of Arts in Human Resources Management as well as of Master of Public Administration, both from the Baruch College of City University of New York.
He is married and has two children.
POPISKA
Egemen Bağış with his wife.
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