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Can Bangladesh and Turkey be friends?

Banglar Bir

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Mar 19, 2006
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Can Bangladesh and Turkey be friends?
Can our businesses find a home in Turkey?/REUTERS
There’s plenty of potential here
We have recently returned from our visit to Turkey. During our visit, we had the privilege to attend a week-long trade and investment seminar series on Bangladesh, organised by our embassy in Ankara, in five important cities in Turkey.

The series of seminars was kicked off on April 27, 2017 in Ankara and rounded off on May 4, 2017 in Istanbul with other events taking place in Bursa, Kayseri, and Kocaeli.

The seminars were attended by as many as 140 businessmen, industrialists, and investors of Turkey, who are widely known in their respective fields.

As per the format of each seminar, the Bangladeshi ambassador to Turkey, M Allama Siddiki, delivered the opening statement, followed by the presentations from the representatives of Bangladesh Export Promotion Bureau (EPB), Bangladesh Investment Development Authority (BIDA), and Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Dhaka (MCCI) on the business and investment opportunities in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh Consul General in Istanbul Mr Mohammad Monirul Islam made closing remarks thanking the organisers for their warmth, hospitality, and interest in Bangladesh.

In his opening address, Ambassador Siddiki sought to reflect upon stable, pluralistic, secular, and vibrant Bangladesh, highlighting our linguistic roots, glorious history of independence, geo-political significance, socio-cultural strengths, and economic transformation.

He particularly emphasised our growing middle-class, expanding consumer base, and demographic dividends. He also showcased a series of commonalities and complementarities shared by Bangladesh and Turkey in terms of historical connections, cultural insights, religious beliefs, social values, and business ethics.

Consul General Mr Islam briefed the participants on the rising importance of Bangladesh in the regional and global calculus, pointing out, in particular, the economic and strategic significance of the Bay of Bengal.

We believe that there are ample opportunities for the two countries to build, strengthen, and expand their business and economic ties, given their historical bonds, cultural synergies, and religious affinities

He argued that Bangladesh not only guarantees a market of 170 million people of its own but also opens up a vast region for the business and investment communities connecting South Asia and Southeast Asia and even the Far East.

It has been reflected in the presentations made in the seminars that Bangladesh-Turkey has a trade volume of about $1.2 billion.

Although the trade is tilted positively in favour of Bangladesh, the figure is certainly far below than that of its potentials, as acknowledged by the Turkish businessmen and investors attending the seminars.

Bangladesh’s export to Turkey is 3.51% of its global share of exports and its export basket is predominantly filled with textiles, jute, yarn, knitwear, etc. Bangladesh’s imports from Turkey are dominated by edible vegetables, cotton, machinery, iron, steel, nuclear reactors, boilers, etc.

In the seminars, some of the sectors have been identified as having high prospects for further consolidating Bangladesh-Turkey business ties, which include, amongst others, pharmaceuticals, ready-made garments, jute products, leather, textile machineries, ICT, and frozen food.

Bangladesh-Turkey investment scenario is no better. Turkish companies have been investing in Bangladesh in sectors like textiles, RMG, carpet production, and computer programming, albeit the amount is insignificant.

However, it came up in the seminars that there are scopes for bringing Turkish investments into Bangladesh in areas of petro-chemical, construction, hotel, tourism, and health care.

However, Turkish businessmen/investors who are now involved with Bangladesh in business/investment urged the Bangladesh authority to further improve/liberalise banking, customs, and taxation systems in Bangladesh.

They also requested to look into the issues of simplifying registration procedures for setting up new company, issuance of work permits, and straightening visa formalities etc.

As businessmen, we also encounter some of the challenges articulated by the Turkish businessmen in the seminars. These need to be effectively addressed to facilitate Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) in Bangladesh.

We got the sense that Turkish people have considerable amount of love and respect for the people of Bangladesh and appear to be serious in engaging with Bangladesh.

We believe that there are ample opportunities for the two countries to build, strengthen, and expand their business and economic ties, given their historical bonds, cultural synergies, and religious affinities.

We have also gathered that some of the Turkish businessmen/investors are making sincere attempts to strengthen their connections with the “East” in view of their growing tensions with Europe and restive environment in the neighbourhood.

Bangladesh should avail this opportunity to scale up its level of engagement with Turkey through robust and target-oriented strategies, policies, and planning.

We are extremely impressed to see the commitment and professionalism of our embassy/consulate officials in Ankara and Istanbul in successfully holding this week-long seminar in Turkey.

We believe the strategy to hold such regular small-scale seminar series may be replicated by other Bangladesh diplomatic/consular missions abroad, which would not only reinforce Bangladesh trade and investment relations with other countries, but also substantially contribute to the image-building exercise that the country is currently undergoing.

Zahirul Quddus and Md Mushfiquzzaman are businessmen.
 
Copied as appeared in daily newspaper. The gist according to me is, enhanced multifaceted bilateral cooperation in all arenas including defense related matters.
 
When Bangladesh executed a war criminal Motiur Rahman Nizami, Turkey protested and recalled its ambassador from Dhaka to please Islamabad. Turkey had no locus standi in the issue. How will Erdogan react if Bangladesh lodged protest against extra constitutional actions taken against large number of government employees in wake of Turkish Coup attempt in 2016?
But if Duterte can be friends with China then nothing stops BD and Turkey to be friends.
 
wow and omg bro look at comments in the newspaper:blink: İhadnt imagined such a thing.

The world is full of surprises and the recent winds tells that a prominent set of influence has actually adopted the way of deception and lies. People inspired by such, are mostly found with these kind of remarks and words otherwise, the norms of civility, diplomacy and manners taught a different way of approach in such kind of matters. Also, we will mostly find these people on internet, pretending to be defining country's diplomacy and foreign affairs but mostly are hired guns for such work.
 
When Bangladesh executed a war criminal Motiur Rahman Nizami, Turkey protested and recalled its ambassador from Dhaka to please Islamabad. Turkey had no locus standi in the issue. How will Erdogan react if Bangladesh lodged protest against extra constitutional actions taken against large number of government employees in wake of Turkish Coup attempt in 2016?
But if Duterte can be friends with China then nothing stops BD and Turkey to be friends.
And every where we find a little indian trying to create rifts where none exist, dont u people get tired of bieng "mohally ke massis", turkey and bangla are both muslim nations, that bond alone preceeds everything else and hence makes both nations not just friends but brothers, turkey will always side with pakistan and pakistan will always side with turkey, its just a thing we have, we cant explain it but that doesnt make turkey n bangla unfriendly, as i said the muslim thing is unignorable...

Engrossed on learning about the Glorious Turkish history, pre dating the Osman Empire.:smitten::smitten::smitten:
Suleman shah n his sons is a good place to start....
 
And yes,whenever I hit back and try to publicize their true evil nature, the Mods delete my posts as personal insults, which they rightly deserve,if not more.
 
Not with BD's current ILLEGAL and TRAITOR and TYRANT regime.
Yes that is a mood killer for ur relations with pakistan too, hope khalida zia wins in the next elecs...

And yes,whenever I hit back and try to publicize their true evil nature, the Mods delete my posts as personal insults, which they rightly deserve,if not more.
Dont use abuses or stuff or use the word hindu, it puts the mods off, and in return for their personal jibes u just keep on insulting india, the mods dont mind that:lol:
 
Yes that is a mood killer for ur relations with pakistan too, hope khalida zia wins in the next elecs...

Nearly impossible.

Because this current govt has set up its own people in administration, police and army. And people although hate this govt., but are not capable enough to make any impact with their raised voice.

There is no democracy here to participate and conduct any fair election.

NO OTHER PARTY has any chance to win against HASINA, even if a new political party is formed by good people.

HASINA is like 50% KIM JUNG UN, 80% FAT, 90% BITCH, and 100% TRAITOR.
 
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