Editor's note: On July 26, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with Chinese senior diplomat Wang Yi in Ankara. Reality Check talked to Ahmet Burak Dağlıoğlu, President of the Republic of Türkiye Investment Office, to get his view on the importance of China-Türkiye relationships. The views expressed in the video are his own and not necessarily those of CGTN.

Edited excerpts:

CGTN: Türkiye is embracing its 100th birthday. And China-Türkiye diplomatic relations started over 52 years ago. So, over the past five decades or so, what have been the highlights of China-Türkiye investment relationship?

Ahmet Burak Dağlıoğlu: Yeah, definitely. This is the 52nd year of the start of the diplomatic relations. And when we look at, especially the economic figures, we are talking about trade volume of $44 billion, and investors of both countries are investing in each other's territory, let's say.

Our focus as [the] Invest in Türkiye organization is on the Chinese companies investing in the country. First of all, we have to say that both leaders, President Erdogan and President Xi Jinping have a strong mutual understanding. Having these policies in line with each other, I think this is crucial for the investor community in both countries.

Secondly, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) made a big, let's say, framework for Chinese companies while investing in Türkiye. Because if we go back to some early decades, the exposure of Chinese companies to Türkiye was limited. But, thanks to Türkiye's position in the Belt and Road Initiative, thanks to the policies developed by the Chinese state, Chinese companies started investing within the country, especially in the last 10 years. So, we can say that this is a quite remarkable time.

Just [to] give you some figures to understand the scale. Currently, we have around 1,200 Chinese companies operating within the country. We know that some of them are using Türkiye as a hub to reach out to surrounding region. Some of them established their operations in Istanbul to manage the region from Türkiye. And we know that many of them are manufacturing in Türkiye and then exporting to the surrounding region.

So, when we look at the total investment amount of those companies in Türkiye, we can say that it is more than $3 billion. But, this is not enough. We have to grow this figure. And when we look at those verticals in terms of industries, we can see that Chinese companies are interested in infrastructure and superstructure projects, especially in a logistic transportation in energy. We have investments in financial sectors, which is crucial in our opinion: ICBC bank and the Bank of China are active in Türkiye, because those financial institutions are enablers of many other businesses including some manufacturing activities, trading activities, some major contracting businesses, and et cetera.

So, when we look at the manufacturing side, we see some important Chinese exposure to Türkiye as well especially in the consumer electronics, home appliances, automotive supply businesses, and et cetera. So, our target is to grow this investor community in Türkiye with having some more Chinese companies definitely and bringing some other functions or divisions of the existing companies within Türkiye.

CGTN: Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed the Belt and Road Initiative a decade ago in 2013 in Kazakhstan. Türkiye was amongst the first countries to join the BRI and it later brought further alignment between the BRI and Türkiye’s Middle Corridor Initiative. As you mentioned, it's been a great success. So, do you see this kind of cooperation bringing further greater regional connectivity?

Ahmet Burak Dağlıoğlu: We are passing through some challenging times globally, and there are so many debates and discussions on globalization versus de-globalization and et cetera. That's definitely for sure that regional alliances are gaining more and more importance. This Belt and Road Initiative was a successful and important project for the last decade, for the last 10 years. But in my opinion, it's importance for the next decade and it will be much more important. So, when we look at multinational companies, they would like to make sure that their supply chain is resilient. It's not broken because of some external shocks let's say. All the investor community is expecting a stable region, especially for the commercial activities and trading activities.

So, from this perspective, BRI would play an important role. Just to give you an example, for example, we know that currently, the railroad is quite active between China and Türkiye for bilateral trading purposes. This was a result of the BRI initiative. A joint Chinese consortium is operating a port in Istanbul, which is quite important for ensuring supply chain resiliency for their clients.

In my opinion, in the next decade, this initiative, right initiative will continue to play an important role, but the nature of investments will change as well. So, maybe we will see some more digital infrastructure investments, or maybe we can see some more manufacturing investments coming to Türkiye to reach out to surrounding regions, because we know that Chinese companies are getting global.

So, while globalizing your businesses, you have to make sure that you have manufacturing capabilities close to your target market. So, we believe that Türkiye can be strong springboard for Chinese companies to reach out to our region, especially Europe, Middle East and North Africa.

CGTN: Just a final question to wrap this up. You said, what happened over the past decade is important, but what's more important is looking ahead for the next decade. So, in the next decade, what do you see as the most exciting part of China-Türkiye relationship, particularly in business investment?

Ahmet Burak Dağlıoğlu: As I we mentioned at the beginning, this is the centennial of the republican time. And we are about to start our second century of the republican time under the leadership of President Erdogan. We have some, again, targets for the next century.

First of all, our target is to become among top ten economies globally. So, this is our grand strategy, let's say, and of course we have some other targets. Just to give you an idea. In the next five years, we would like to grow our exports to $400 billion from the existing level of $255 billion. Definitely, contribution of international stakeholders, especially international companies, are quite important to achieve these targets. We know that China and its investor community has a strong footprint globally. We are inviting them to Türkiye to contribute to our targets. This will be a win-win case. Chinese companies will win while Türkiye is winning. We are inviting them to be in an ecosystem which will grow rapidly, very fast. So, this is, let's say, are a key message to the Chinese investors.

CGTN: Great, exciting times to look ahead to. Thank you very much.

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