Despite geographical distance, the emerging economies of Turkey and Mexico are seeking to strengthen ties, especially on cooperating over economic opportunities, migration, the fight against terrorism and drug trafficking, according to the Mexican foreign minister.
“Turkey has an increasing presence in the international arena. It’s really assuming the role it is called to play as one major country, one important economy,” Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinoza told the Hürriyet Daily News and Economic Review in an interview Friday.
Following a visit by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to Mexico in 2009, both countries have started to work on a framework to boost bilateral relations. Espinoza, in her visit to Ankara on Friday, signed a cooperation program and an agreement, which will facilitate cooperation in education, science, culture, arts, the media, youth and sports.
The foreign minister highlighted the similarities between Mexico and Turkey as developing and large countries that have a very open stand regarding their contact with the outside world.
Noting that Mexico was following Turkey’s European Union accession talks, she said, “We believe very much in integration and strengthening the institutions of the country.”
Espinoza said her country’s intention was to provide further opportunities for the business communities of the two sides to come together in the search for joint ventures and projects.
“They can make some joint efforts to have a bigger presence in Mexico,” she said, adding that Turkish companies can develop with other companies in Latin America in general, as well as the Caribbean.
“In a short time we hope to finalize an agreement on double taxation and an agreement on the protection of the environment of investment,” she said.
Turkey and Mexico also agreed to take steps to strengthen the fight against terrorism and drug trafficking.
“Turkey and Mexico internally have legal frameworks, at the same time we have very broad framework internationally on the fight against organized crime that have to do with a different aspects where criminal organizations operate,” she said, indicating the smuggling of migrants and arms.
“What we want to do is to get our authorities in this area working very closely together to exchange information on their experiences and also to exchange intelligence information,” she said.
Turkey has supported Mexico’s concerns over the immigration law in the U.S. state of Arizona. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu voiced Turkey’s concern that the law might trigger xenophobia and said Turkey shared the same notion as Mexico on the law in the joint press conference with Espinoza.
“We signed a memorandum in order to cooperate between our people responsible for dealing with [our] diasporas in different parts of the world. That’s another similarity between Turkey and Mexico,” Espinoza told the Daily News.
“You have a lot of nationals living abroad. This is the case for Mexico. We have a very specific policy toward them in order to support their needs while they are living abroad and supporting their families. We want to exchange our experiences in that field and see what we can build together,” Espinoza said.
Mexico will host the 16th session Conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC, in Cancun in November.
“I was very happy to hear that Turkey is ready to support Mexico’s in its task as a host and chair of the conference on the climate change,” the Mexican foreign minister said.
“Turkey is an important actor in these negotiations,” she said. “We hope that Turkey will remain being a very active participant in order to give an impulse to having a negotiation, the most concrete negotiations as soon as possible.”
Espinoza explained Mexico’s objective for the conference, “What we can achieve in Cancun would be for the first time a framework where we could take decisions that allow us to implement measures immediately in order to comply with the obligations for the different countries that are contained in the convention.”
