Turkish Exports to Balkan Countries Rise Rapidly

Turkish exports to Balkan countries rose by 22 per cent in the first five month of this year and earned the country almost 4 billion US dollars .

The data from Turkey's Exporters' Assembly, TIM, were collected by Turkey's state news agency Anadolu and reported on June 16.

The main export destinations in the region include Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Macedonia, Romania and Serbia, plus other nearby countries such as Slovakia, Greece and Slovenia.

"These figures are the results of increasing political relations between governments and several trade agreements between Turkey and the region, which aimed to increase trade volume [but] Turkey should have reached these figures long ago," Gozde Kilic-Yasin, an expert on Turkey-Balkan relations in Ankara, told BIRN.

She called the figures somewhat surprising, given Turkey's currently poor economic environment.

Over this period, Turkey exported most to Bulgaria, selling goods worth 1.1 billion US dollars. Greece and Slovenia followed, with exports worth 839 and 587 US million dollars respectively.

Serbia bought Turkish goods worth 367 million US dollars.

"Balkan countries, especially Serbia, have made great efforts to attract Turkish investments in recent years. Developing Turkish-Serbian political relations has also helped," Kilic-Yasin noted.

However, she added, Turkey's growing ties with Serbia had upset many people in half-Muslim Bosnia, where the Bosniak [Bosnian Muslim] community expected much more of Turkey.

"Bosnian people are criticising this situation; they believe Turkish investments should have been much higher in Bosnia, given the fraternal political relations between the two countries," she said.

Turkey sold goods to Bosnia...