Cultural program to strengthen ties with India
IN a bid to boost bilateral relations, the Indian embassy in Ankara will host a series of cultural events across Turkey this year. The program will be titled “India along Bosporus.”
Speaking to Anadolu Agency (AA) on “World Hindi Day,” celebrated at Ankara University on Thursday, Indian Ambassador to Turkey Sanjay Bhattacharyya said, the two countries enjoy “very old civilizational connection.”
“The festival will showcase the most outstanding features of Indian culture and civilization,” he said, adding that the inaugural function will be held in March, followed by a series of different events all around Turkey in April.
Bhattacharyya said that the two countries are also working to boost their trade ties. “When my Prime Minister [Narendra Modi] met President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan during the latter’s visit to India, they set a target of $10 billion in trade volume between two countries by 2020,” said Bhattacharyya. Turkey and India’s bilateral trade volume reached $8 billion in the first 11 months of 2018, up from $7 billion in all of 2017, according to the Turkish Trade Ministry.
“When we are able to achieve the target set by our leaders, we will double it and do much better in the next five years,” the ambassador said.
He added that Turkish Trade Minister Ruhsar Pekcan’s visit to India in December was “extremely significant.” He said that her visit allowed a “high-level exchange” and it allowed business groups from both countries to meet.
Referring to a bilateral trade agreement signed between India and Turkey in the 1950s, he said that the two sides had done the “preliminary” work toward signing a free trade agreement in the last decade.
“Both sides have confirmed that they would like to begin negotiations on a free trade agreement. I’m confident that we would be able to conclude the negotiations rapidly because of strong mutual interests,” he said.
The Indian ambassador said that at least 30 Indian companies were working in Turkey in the chemicals, automotive, machinery, pharmaceutical and construction sectors. “One of the leading contractors in TANAP [Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline] is Indian,” he said, adding a handful of Turkish companies are operating in construction, glass manufacturing, and service and logistics sectors in India.
Bhattacharyya noted that the educational exchanges between India and Turkey were “not at a very high level.”
“But I have met with the [Turkish] minister for education, and we look forward to signing a Memorandum of Understanding [MoU] on cooperation in education which will involve not just exchange of students and faculties but will also look at bridging educational institutions,” the ambassador said. He added that Turkish literature is being taught at many Indian universities, while the Indian civilization is being studied at a number of universities in Turkey, including at Ankara University’s 80-year-old Department of Indology, which hosted the “World Hindi Day” program.
Speaking at the event, Bhattacharyya said: “We are planning to hold a regional Hindi language literary conference in Ankara, with an aim to spread the language which has got received international recognition.”
Praising Turkey’s “tremendous development” in the defense sector, Bhattacharya said India and Turkey have “very close political and security engagement [...] we held counterterrorism dialogue and have exchanged notes as well.”
At the program, Turkish students read Hindi stories and poems by famous Indian poets. The main attraction of the program was a skit, “Magical Twigs,” which revisited the wit and wisdom of Birbal, a Hindu adviser in the court of the Mughal Emperor Akbar.