FM: Turkey wants to become important player in Caucasus

3 April 2017 12:25 (UTC+04:00)

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By Kamila Aliyeva

Turkey wants to become an important player in the Caucasus with Azerbaijan, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on April 3.

Turkey is striving to become an important global player as well, Turkish media reported citing the Minister.

"We want to be at all negotiating arenas of the world in order to protect the oppressed and helpless in all corners of the world," he said.

Cavusoglu went on to add that Turkey holds activities for the settlement of conflicts, the end of the civil war in Syria and the development of the Balkan countries.

Earlier, the Minister said that Ankara continues its work on creation of new trilateral formats – Turkey-Azerbaijan-Russia and Turkey-Azerbaijan-Kazakhstan and increase of trust within other trilateral cooperation formats.

Currently, there are several trilateral formats for cooperation in the Caucasus region, such as Azerbaijan-Georgia-Turkey, Azerbaijan-Turkey-Iran and Azerbaijan-Turkey-Turkmenistan.

Turkey became Azerbaijan’s main foreign trade partner last year. Trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Turkey amounted to $2.3 billion in 2016 (with a specific weight of 13.09 percent of total trade turnover), according to Azerbaijan’s State Customs Committee.

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Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva