Statements by U.S. Officials
Remarks of U.S. Ambassador Ross Wilson as delivered at The Fall Meeting of the European Council of American Chambers of Commerce
Istanbul, Turkey
October 13, 2008
Welcome to the city of Istanbul, to a country that those of us who live and work here enjoy all the time. I hope that you had a chance while you are here to sample the covered bazaar, to sample the Bosphorus, to sample some of the other interesting and exciting aspects of this country that’s so important to United States, that’s so important in the region, that is a key crossroads as Stephen mentioned earlier.
Our history here, the United States history here, is a long one. But in the several decades after the first official contact between the United States government - the new United States government - and the Ottoman Empire in 1800, when the U.S.S. George Washington sailed into the harbor here, most of the work to develop U.S.-Turkish relations was actually by the business sector.
And the first bilateral agreements that we signed in the 1830s and 1840s were the kinds of treaties of trade and commerce that the United States saw signed with a number of countries. It reflected recognition, even then, of economic opportunity that American business, American entrepreneurs wanted to find ways to tap into.
During the Cold War, and especially the early years of the Cold War, security and political matters dominated our relationship. But in the post-Cold War world what we have been trying to do is to privatize our relations and diversify our relations, away from over-reliance or perhaps over-emphasis on the security, although that remains an important factor - and a very important factor - in our relations; but also to seek to develop people-to-people ties, business-to-business ties, to foster trade, to foster investment.
That was reflected in the 1990s, in an initiative that the Clinton administration launched, the so-called Big Emerging Markets Initiative. Turkey was one of ten emerging markets that the Clinton administration really focused hard on to try to promote trade and investment. It’s reflected in what we do now through an Economic Partnership Council that meets a couple of times a year that comes up with very various specific action plans of steps we can take, governments can take, to try to resolve issues in our bilateral trade relationship to help attract more business between our two countries. And broadly speaking, I think we have achieved a fair amount. U.S. foreign direct investment here over the last three years is 5.4 billion dollars, which is about 5 billion dollars more than U.S. foreign direct investment in the previous couple of decades. U.S. exports to Turkey have been growing rapidly over the same period and really over much of the last decade when we attained even double-digit percentage growth rates in U.S. sales here. For the first seven months of 2008, U.S. exports to Turkey are up 70 percent over 2007. That shows that American businesses are doing some very good work. I hope that our Commercial Service here, and Greg Taevs is some place, gets some credit for this. A lot of work goes into that, of course, by a lot of people. We want to see more of that, of course. And I hope that those of you who have come from elsewhere in Europe can take back to your American companies based in your countries there are opportunities here. We hope that they can be examined.
Our overall bilateral relationship with this country is a very good one. If you look around the perimeter of Turkey - we don’t have a map here - but if you looked around it, almost a blind man can see or feel or sense that there are, that Turkey is surrounded by a number of critical areas that are at the very top of the United States foreign policy agenda. Obviously Iraq, Iran, the Middle East, the Caucasus, the Balkans, the Black Sea. A little bit farther afield: Afghanistan, international terrorism, energy issues. Really when I think of it, of the top five or six American foreign policy priorities generally, Turkey is involved in every single one of them with a sole exception of the North Korea nuclear problem. And count your blessings, Egemen, that you don’t have to be involved in that.
Turkey is confident country, it is an energetic country. It faces, like a lot of countries that are undergoing rapid modernization, it faces a number of political pressures that flow from that. It faces no shortage of tough issues. All those hot spots around you, around Turkey’s periphery, are hot and at least as hot and troublesome for Turkey as they are for the United States and the rest of the world. And there are some complicated transitions and changes going on internally as well. As I say, it’s a confident and energetic society that has lots of opportunity for U.S. business.
The last thing I’d mention is the EU component to what Turkey is involved in, since this is the European AmChams that have gathered here. We believe, the United States believes, that Turkey’s EU aspiration is critically important to the future of this country and critically important to the future of Europe. A dynamic, confident, fast-moving, fast-developing young country like this can be a tremendous asset for Europe. And we think also that the process of acceding to the European Union and working through all of the various reforms that are necessary in order to achieve that can be an extremely important, extremely helpful set of guidelines as Turkey works its way through some of its domestic political issues - guidelines to political leaders on some of, what are some of the answers that have worked elsewhere in the world and ways that Turkey can get ahead.
I will close with that. I didn’t want to give a long speech. I know that Egemen will talk a little bit more specifically about some of the issues here. But I do again want to welcome all of you and congratulate you for coming here. I know you have had a very warm –you’ve gotten very warm hospitality from our Turkish hosts. Thank you; thank very much Uğur Bey for that.