Turkey hopes for revived post-sanctions trade with Iran

ANKARA 

Turkey hopes for improved trade with neighbor Iran following the lifting of international sanctions, a presidential spokesman said on Wednesday.

"Iran is an important neighbor to us and an important trade partner,” Ibrahim Kalin told reporters in Ankara. “We hope that relief for the Iranian economy will lead to improved trade relations for Turkey and Iran.”

According to Turkey’s Foreign Ministry, Turkey exports machinery, motor vehicles, iron and steel products to Iran while its crude oil and natural gas account for 90 percent of imports. Trade volume between the two countries stood at $10.7 billion in 2010.

Under a nuclear deal reached on Tuesday between Iran and six world powers, economic sanctions are to be lifted in return for restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program.

Kalin, a former senior advisor to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, described the agreement as an "important step" in removing the nuclear weapons from the Middle East.

He added: "The realization of the agreement depends on the implementation of the provisions and the sustainability of the agreement depends on the will of the parties. We will be the supporter of this.”

Meanwhile, Kalin criticized the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party Co-Chairman Selahattin Demirtas over his calls for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) to lay down its arms.

“On one hand you say 'We are here to contribute to the solution'... On the other hand you say 'It is not our job and even if it were, nobody would take us seriously. You know who to go to’," Kalin said, citing Demirtas’s apparent reference to jailed PKK head Abdullah Ocalan.

"It is difficult to even make sense of these contradictory statements.”

Demirtas made his call for disarmament on Tuesday after the Kurdistan Communities' Union, which is linked to the PKK, rejected Ocalan’s plea in February for the PKK - considered a terrorist group in Turkey, the EU and U.S. - to abandon the armed struggle.

"The call was already made. Why have the weapons not been laid down?" Kalin said, insisting on a "clear and unconditional" call for disarming.

The government launched the “solution process” in 2013 to bring an end to the 30-year-old conflict in the east and southeast that has seen more than 44,000 people killed.