Turkish Prime Minister to Visit Tehran Soon
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan plans to pay a visit to Iran later in January to meet high-ranking Iranian officials, including President Hassan Rouhani.
The announcement was made in news conference between visiting Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and his Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu in Istanbul on Saturday evening.
Zarif had also held a meeting with Erdogan during which the two sides voiced satisfaction about the expansion of relations.
They also discussed preparatory measures for the further expansion of ties between the two neighboring states before Erdogan's upcoming visit to Tehran.
Zarif and Erdogan also said Iran and Turkey plan to bring the value of bilateral trade ties to $30bln by 2015 through using the existing capacities of the two Muslim countries.
Zarif and Erdogan were also agreed that the 24th Joint Economic Commission of the two countries scheduled to be held in Turkey this month would be the right place to discuss the details for boosting the bilateral trade.
Iran, which owns the world’s largest natural gas reserves, is Turkey’s second biggest gas supplier after Russia. Turkey uses a significant portion of its imported Iranian natural gas to generate electricity.
The volume of Iran-Turkey annual trade exchanges reached roughly USD16 billion in 2011, and soared past USD22 billion by the end of 2012.