ANKARA
Turkey's Ambassador in Cairo Huseyin Avni Botsali has said that Turkey and Egypt were not "rival" countries yet "partners" in the Middle East politics.
He has stated, "Strategic partnership needs to be built. Especially, this is now more possible in 21st century than ever."
Botsali assessed Turkey-Egypt relations and informed AA about the developments between two powers.
He said that since the revolution took start in Egypt, the most important development between Turkey-Egypt relations was the improvement in economic relations.
"In 2011 and 2012, our trade volume increased 30 percent. In 2010 Turkey-Egypt trade volume was $3.2 billion, it reached $4.2 billion in 2011 and this figure rose to $5 billion in 2012," said Ambassador Botsali.
He added that as Turkey and Egypt do not share borders, there were not much ethical and geopolitical controversies.
"We have multifaceted relations. Relations started to develop and accelerated in multi layered areas when Egypt was scanning countries close to itself when they were restructuring. Egypt took Turkey's successful economy stories as model. They scan Indonesia, Malaysia and East European countries but between all, Egypt is interested in Turkey's solutions and they way Turkey deals with problems," told Botsali.
He noted that after the Free Trade Agreement became effective in 2007, the number of Turkish firms who trade in Egypt started to double up.
Botsali stated that conjecturally Turkish investments in Egypt worth 1.5 billion USD.
