Caspian Energy (CE:) Mr. President, today Turkey continues to develop based on its unique development model. Do you envision Turkey as an oriental country or an occidental one in the future? How will the process of globalization or, as you put it recently, the process by which the world becomes a “global village” have an impact on Turkey?

His Excellency Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President of the Republic of Turkey: In Turkey, we have covered a significant distance in many areas in the last 12 years. Our international reputation, profile is on the rise. Today, our country contributes positively to the issues on the global agenda and we actively support regional and global peace. The political and economic reforms, that we implemented, played a significant role in this process.

With the impetus provided by our process of accession to the European Union, the space for individual rights and freedoms have grown, civil-military relations have been harmonized with the practice and examples in the West and our democracy has been reinforced through legal changes. We also carried out a number of structural reforms in banking, financial sector, social security and health for the purpose of increasing our economic resilience to crises and reducing spiraling debt. As a result, our economy is stronger than it has ever been. We are the 6th largest economy in Europe and the 17th largest economy in the world. When compared to the period 12 years ago, our national income tripled, while the volume of external trade quadrupled. Our share in world exports almost doubled. Foreign direct investment in Turkey in the same period increased 10 fold to exceed a total of $125 billion. Economists estimate that Turkey will maintain its position as the fastest growing OECD country in 2012-2017 and become the second largest economy in Europe by 2050.

The process of globalization, that gained impetus after the Cold War, also contributed to progress in Turkey. Physical borders became meaningless as a result of major revolutionary changes on a global scale. Barriers before free trade were removed one by one. As a result, the world became a global village.

Mankind derives maximum benefit from globalization. In this important process, we must look for ways to jointly counter new and unique threats such as international terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, climate change, financial crises, energy and food security and cyber attacks that threaten us all.

In the last 12 years Turkey has been also attracting attention as an accession country to the European Union and with its active, visionary and multi-dimensional foreign policy. Turkey sits at the crossroads of many countries of Europe and Asia and has strong historical and cultural ties with all these regions. I believe that Turkey’s position at the center of the Afro-Eurasian region will grow even stronger in the future.