The Editor of New Era newspaper Chrispin Inambao this week interviewed the Ambassador of Turkey to Namibia, Her Excellency Deniz Çakar, cross-examining her on the existing bilateral ties. Some excerpts of the interview.
What is your assessment regarding the bilateral relations between Turkey and Namibia and what key areas of cooperation in this relationship are you going to strengthen during your tenure?
First of all before starting (on) our bilateral relationship I should give you just the general outlook about Turkey’s approach towards Africa. Actually with this continent our relations go far beyond what we know today. During the times of the Ottoman Empire the Turkish people were in a very close interaction with the northern part of the continent. It should be noted Turkey is situated in the crossroads of the Eastern Mediterranean, which forms a bridge from East to West or vice versa. It is also on the main trade routes that brought people together from Asia to Africa and the West. Turkey’s approach to Africa is based on a strategic partnership on equal footing. Our policy on opening up to Africa was initiated in 1998. There were certain things which kept Turkey occupied as well as the international agenda, in that sense one being the dissolution of the ex-Soviet Union and shortly after that the dissolution of ex-Yugoslavia; the developments of the first Gulf War and the second Gulf War in the Middle East area where Turkey had a key role to play during these historic changes in its region.
Our focus on Africa started to grow gradually from 2003 onwards. Turkey welcomed the decision of the 19th African Union Summit in 2008 declaring Turkey as a Strategic Partner. The same year Turkey hosted the Turkey-Africa Cooperation Summit with the participation of 49 African countries. In 2003, the number of Turkish embassies were 12 on the entire (African) continent, but today we have 39 embassies operating in Africa. Turkish Airlines is flying to 40 destinations to connect the major cities of the continent to the world and assisting in the boosting of trade in the respective countries of this jewel continent.
The Turkish foreign policy toward Africa is not only based on mutual trade objectives but it has a comprehensive approach including development of Africa via technical assistance and training.
In other words, to assist Africa with its development and capacity building to come to the level of the international players. Turkey helps African countries through its development agency TIKA (Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency) which opened its first office in Addis Ababa in 2005, and has eleven offices in Africa. The eleventh of these offices was opened last month in Windhoek and caters for predominantly the southern African region like Botswana, South Africa, Swaziland and Angola. The purpose is to give development assistance and where necessary humanitarian assistance and to support capacity building in every possible field, be it agriculture, education, the tourism industry, health and energy cooperation.
Can you expound on the type of developmental assistance that TIKA avails to the various African countries and what has been one of its major development projects?
TIKA projects extend from technical infrastructure to corporate capacity increase. TIKA continues work in 38 countries through 39 programme coordinators and carries out activities and projects in nearly 120 countries around the globe. Opening a fully fledged hospital in Nyala/South Darfur with a 150-bed capacity, constructing a double road for 23 km in Somalia (24 solar system lights on this road is provided), preparing the Agricultural Master Plan of Djibouti and the donation here of fishing vessels to assist the fishing sector as part of the said Master Plan, constructing of an iron foundry in Gambia to assist the construction sector, vocational training centre for trainers in Khartoum/Sudan and many more like water sanitation, irrigation systems, all among the recent works of TIKA that I can count in one go at the moment.
Depending on the country’s developmental needs TIKA provides humanitarian assistance, capacity building and developmental assistance in any given field. With Namibia we are now tapping the ground with the National Planning Commission (NPC), the Ministry of Health and Social Services, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Forestry. At the moment there is a project with Unam and the Ministry of Health and Social Services. Soon we will be on the ground and the assistance and capacity building will start like construction of classrooms, health centres in remote areas, providing healthcare equipment including ambulances and to train staff or to train the trainers in various fields.
At the last count the volume of bilateral trade between Namibia and Turkey was N$97 million – that translates to US$10 million if you like. Are you as the Turkish Ambassador happy with this figure?
Absolutely not, but I must say this figure has already doubled since the opening of the (Turkish) Embassy in Windhoek in January 2012. One of our main areas of focus is to boost trade between our two countries. Capacity building and development assistance to Namibia is one oar – the other oar is to develop trade relations and to increase the trade volume. Turkey is a country with a population of 76 million, almost 28 million of it is the labour force. It’s the sixth biggest economy in Europe and the 17th biggest in the world, so it’s got a lot to offer Namibia. In terms of tourism Turkey received 33 million foreign tourists last year. The number of tourists visiting Namibia is indicated as nearly 1.3 million. It’s good – nearly more than half of Namibia’s population. Namibia can attract more Turkish tourists and vice versa. Actually we are working on it by organising a familiarisation trip involving Turkish Airways, Air Namibia and Namibia Wildlife Resorts (NWR) and the Namibia Tourism Board – this will take place at the end of November. The Turkish Travel Agencies Association is a very, very big non-government organisation which is working very closely with the Turkish Ministry of Tourism and Culture. They are acting as the coordinating board to get the big tour operators and travel journalists and a renowned documentary filmmaker who will be travelling to Namibia, and our Namibian friends will show them the unique beauties of this country. We shouldn’t forget there are almost 12 million Turkish tourists travelling abroad every year, more or less. So we would like to attract some of them to Namibia. We have some obstacles at the moment like the visa, of not having a Namibian Embassy in Ankara. Obtaining a visa is really troublesome for Turkish people. The Namibian Embassy in Berlin (Germany) is accredited to Turkey so the visa applications have to go to Berlin and this is rather expensive because you have to send your documents via international courier companies which is costly and then the visa fees which are also quite costly.
We already signed with Namibia the Visa Abolition Agreement for diplomatic and official passports, which is a very good development. We are laying the groundwork for some other areas of cooperation, like the training of Namibian diplomats at the Diplomacy Academy in Ankara and starting the political consultations of which the first round was already concluded last August between our foreign ministries. These are very promising developments and form strong grounds for further cooperation.
The opening of a Namibian embassy in Ankara will also be a tremendous help in achieving the goals for our cooperation. We hope this happens in the very near future. All these developments will eventually assist to boost trade between Turkey and Namibia.
Your Excellency, you said 12 million people from Turkey visit different countries annually as tourists. How many of these people come to Africa and which are the most popular African destinations for Turkish tourists and how much do they spend collectively?
There are around 168 000 tourists visiting Africa from Turkey. But there is a growing number because Europe – as a tourist destination – for Turkish people is saturated so out of the 12 million they are mostly concentrated in South America, Asia Pacific and Africa. But the basic destinations in Africa are Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa and coming that close and not to come to Namibia is just a lack of knowledge. Because Turkish people are yet to get to know Namibia. What we are trying to do is to bring Namibia into the picture with Turkish tourism travellers to introduce them to what Namibia has to offer. First of all you have certain strengths, you are a very safe country, and relatively in terms of expenses you are not an expensive country for adventure tourism. Secondly, you have unique beauty which they do not have in many other countries like having the ocean and the Namib Desert, Kalahari Desert. Namibia is a clean country, no hygiene problems and also has very good fauna and flora and last but not least very friendly people. So these are very, very important. Regarding transportation, though not at the desired levels but quite good connections and Turkish Airlines flies to Johannesburg daily so it’s very easy to travel from Johannesburg to Windhoek via Air Namibia or South African Airways; or the Air Namibia flights from Frankfurt to Windhoek are another good link because we have frequent flights from Istanbul to Frankfurt which is a very busy destination.
Your Excellency, some experts often say our population of two million-plus discourages potential investors. What are some of the challenges specifically facing potential Turkish investors here? Have you experienced any problems?
There are a few challenges yet not insurmountable, for instance the visa requirement is one of them. That is something that could be sorted out. For a businessman two things matter – how he will travel and easy access, and if the country is safe or not. The easy access was a challenge and we are overcoming it slowly and in terms of trade we are receiving everyday quite a number of applications from Turkish business circles in every field to seek opportunities in Namibia. I am confident the way we are going they will come back to us soon as prospective business traders or investors. Local bureaucracy takes a little too long to issue work permits and residence permits.
The Turkish people intending to come to Namibia – in which areas have they indicated they are interested, is it investment or tourism?
In tourism they are very few but we are trying to work on that to improve tourism but definitely it is investment. The Turkish business people are renowned in terms of construction. After the change wave in the late 1980s and early 1990s newly reborn republics in central Asia and eastern Europe, the Balkans, attracted many Turkish construction companies and they contributed tremendously rebuilding those war-torn countries. This is valid in the Middle East and northern Africa as well. So they have the expertise, they have the know-how and they have the potential of doing that. Turkish business people when they are involved in construction actually also train local staff. They usually recruit locally and this helps to create a lot of employment for Namibians. Construction is one of the main primary areas. Other areas of interest are import and export of automotives, spare parts, construction material, glassware and foodstuff. Turkey is a country almost as big as Namibia land-wise – we are slightly smaller at 784 000 square kilometres. We were a predominantly agricultural country, then we became an industrialised country, but agriculture is still very important and we have good technical know-how on agriculture. It’s one of the very few countries which can also sufficiently feed its population of 76 million people through its own resources. So in that sense we have every kind of foodstuff that we export all over the world.
A lot of companies are interested in food imports and exports. We are as a peninsula surrounded by sea. We have a lot of fish and seafood but the varieties of the ocean and warm sea fish/seafood are different.
The Mediterranean is a warm sea and our seafood is totally different from what the oceans offer.