Alisher Kadirov, Department Head at the Institute for Strategic and Regional Studies under the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan (ISRS), expressed this opinion during the Uzbekistan – Türkiye roundtable discussion on “OTS and prospects of strategic relations between Uzbekistan and Türkiye”.

As the ISRS expert noted, in the era of global geopolitical shifts, OTS is becoming a key player in the Eurasian space, uniting the Turkic countries into a powerful economic and political alliance. “Against this background, the rapidly developing ties between Türkiye and Uzbekistan stand out especially brightly”, he said.

In recent years, relations between Uzbekistan and Türkiye have made a qualitative leap, reaching the level of a comprehensive strategic partnership. According to the expert, this implies not only the expansion of economic ties, but also the deepening of political dialogue, cultural exchange, and cooperation security.

In this context, he focused on the dynamic development of bilateral trade, economic and investment cooperation, specifying that over the past five years, the volume of mutual trade between the two countries has increased by 1.3 times, the number of enterprises with Turkish capital in Uzbekistan has tripled and reached 1898, and the volume of FDI from Türkiye has increased 10 times. Over the past year, 260 new Uzbekistan – Türkiye joint ventures have been created, which brought Türkiye third place among other partners in the number of joint ventures in Uzbekistan.

Thus, the ISRS representative concluded that Uzbekistan and Türkiye demonstrate a strong commitment to strengthening trade ties. Despite the success already achieved, both countries set even more ambitious goals. It is planned to reduce customs tariffs within the framework of the preferential trade agreement to increase trade turnover to $5 billion.

“In the long term, we aim for an even more impressive result – to increase bilateral trade volume to $10 billion. This level of trade turnover has the potential to take the partnership between the countries to a qualitatively new level, making it one of the key factors in the region’s economic development”, the expert concluded.

For information, the event organized by the Development Strategy Center jointly with the Turkish Marmara Group Foundation on October 29 this year in Tashkent was also attended by representatives of the University of World Economy and Diplomacy and Tashkent State University of Oriental Studies. The Turkish Ambassador to Uzbekistan and Turkish parliamentarians represented the Turkish side.

UzA