Turkey is interested in intensifying its cooperation with the Eurasian Economic Union, Turkey’s economy minister said Tuesday.
“Minister of Economy of the Republic of Turkey Nihat Zeybekci suggested intensifying cooperation of Turkey and EEU countries,” the press service of Zeybekci’s Kazakh counterpart Erbolat Dossayev said in a statement after a meeting between the two ministers, Sputnik reported.
According to the statement, Zeybekci also expressed Turkish interest in participating in several projects in Kazakhstan.
The EEU, which comprises Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia, is an integration association, which aims to achieve the free flow of goods and services between its member countries.
Many countries, including China, Thailand, Indonesia and Cambodia, have expressed interest in creating a free trade area with the EEU, according to Russian Economic Development Minister Alexey Ulyukaev.
Meanwhile, in an interview with American TV channel CBS and PBS, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the Customs Union and the Eurasian Economic Union were established not by force, but through a compromise.
“It was a challenging, complicated, multi-year process based on agreement, compromise and mutually acceptable conditions in the hope of creating for our economies and for our people better competitive advantages in the world markets and in the world as a whole,” Putin said in the run-up to his address at the UN General Assembly’s 70th session.
Putin said that Russia wants to, at least, preserve the common humanitarian space within the modern civilized framework, to ensure that there are no national boundaries, so that people could freely communicate with each other, and Russia wants the joint economy to develop using the advantages that were inherited from the former Soviet Union–the common infrastructure, railway transport, road network, power system and finally the great Russian language, which unites all former republics of the Soviet Union and gives them clear competitive advantages in promoting various integration projects in the former Soviet Union area.
He recalled that first the Customs Union was established which was then transformed it into the Eurasian Economic Union.
“When people communicate freely, when labor force, goods, services and funds move freely as well, when there are no state dividing lines and when we have common legal regulation, for example, in the social sphere—all that is good enough, people should feel free,” he said.
