The Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Kostas Fragogiannis, completed today Friday his two-day working visit to Istanbul, accompanied by high-ranking executives of approximately 100 companies as well as institutional actors.

The positive climate in Greek-Turkish relations was reaffirmed at the 6th meeting of the Greece-Turkey Joint Economic Committee, under the co-chairmanship of Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Kostas Fragogiannis and Deputy Minister of Trade of Turkey, Mustafa Tuztzou. Afterwards, the two deputy ministers signed the final text of the meeting, while before the meeting they had a long meeting, in the presence of delegations from both sides.

The Greek deputy minister highlighted the positive course of Greek-Turkish economic relations in areas such as tourism, and especially the positive response of the Turkish side for the fast visa to the Greek islands. As he said, the goal is to double the volume of transactions per year to 10 billion dollars.

Specifically, Mr. Fragogiannis stated:

“The 6th Session of the Joint Economic Committee of Greece-Turkey has been concluded with great success. We made a detailed review of all our issues that are economic, commercial, touristic in nature. There is an obvious good will to strengthen the economic ties between the two countries. After all, we have said since December 7 of the previous year that we will make efforts to strengthen investments and trade anyway.

»There is, as I said, a good mood and we have thought of mechanisms and ways in which we can bring the two business communities closer to each other, in order to highlight opportunities, either commercial or investment. The Turkish side is excited about the possibility of issuing an entry visa to the ten Greek islands, under conditions, which stipulate that they will only visit these islands and for 10 days only. This strengthens the possibilities of our own entrepreneurs in the islands to have more customers and more consumption.

“At the same time, there is a good mood to strengthen the transport links in terms of the entrance bridge from the Gardens, but also the direction of commercial flows from Turkey to Greece and from Greece to Turkey and I think we closed with a good and general disposition to cooperate and to deal with our issues with good disposition and will on both sides. I don’t want to get into minor individual issues, but we also took specific issues that concern the trade of the two countries, which we promised to resolve in a good mood between us.”

For his part, the Turkish Deputy Minister of Trade, Mustafa Tuzcu, said: “You know that during the visit of our president to Athens it was decided to hold this meeting and as a specific result of that visit we held this meeting. She was very successful. We aim to reach 10 billion dollars in trade between us. Regarding this we are promoting an action plan, a road map. Especially in matters of transport, customs, trade, we decided to implement a strong action plan together with an important road map. In fact today, even more important was the fact that with this meeting about a hundred businessmen from the Greek side will meet with more than 100 businessmen from our side”.

Mr. Fragogiannis also participated in the work of the Greek-Turkish Economic Forum organized by the Council of Foreign Economic Relations of Turkey (DEIK) in collaboration with Enterprise Greece. About 100 Greek businessmen were in Istanbul and had contacts with about 200 of their Turkish counterparts.

On the sidelines of his contacts, Mr. Fragogiannis had an informal meeting with the Turkish Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Burak Aksapar, with whom he is conducting the dialogue on the positive agenda between Greece and Turkey.

The previous day, Mr. Fragogiannis visited the headquarters of the Union of Chambers and Stock Exchanges of Turkey and then talked about Greek-Turkish with members of the academic community at Kadir Has University.

On the evening of the first day of the visit of the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Greek delegation and business delegation sat down to a dinner hosted in a well-known hotel on the Bosphorus by the Greek businessman of Istanbul, Byronas Nikolaidis, with the participation of Turkish businessmen.