The launch of direct flights between Taiwan and Turkey at the end of this month will greatly boost bilateral tourism and trade, which are still far from reaching their full potential, Turkish Office representative Ismet Erikan said.
“I believe this is a new window, a new door-opening for the people of Taiwan, for the business circles of Taiwan, and definitely it will increase trade, it will increase tourism, it will increase academic cooperation in every field,” Erikan said in an interview on Thursday. “Last year, we had approximately 40,000 tourists going from Taiwan to Turkey, and by starting daily flights [between] Taipei and Istanbul, we are hoping that this number will increase to 100,000 or more yearly.”
Beginning March 31, Turkish Airlines — Turkey’s national flag carrier — is set to offer daily flights from Taipei to Istanbul and four flights per week from Istanbul to Taipei. Daily flights are to become available from Istanbul to Taipei early next month.
It now takes 14-to-16 hours to fly between the two cities. The direct flights would shorten the flight time by about four hours.
“Turkey offers the full package,” Erikan said. “From Istanbul, in four hours flight time, you can reach 50 different countries. This is a quarter of the world’s population and one-fourth of the world’s GDP.”
Since 2013 Turkey has included Taiwan in its e-visa program, which makes it cheaper and faster for Taiwanese passport holders to apply for visas, Erikan said.
Erikan said he is uninspired by the low bilateral trade volume over the past 10 years. Trade between Taiwan and Turkey reached US$1.87 billion last year, an increase from US$1.19 billion recorded in 2004.
According to Ministry of Finance statistics, the nation’s exports to Turkey, which consist primarily of machinery, electronics and electrical equipment, appliances, textiles, base metals, plastics and rubber, totaled US$1.7 billion last year.
Imports from Turkey, meanwhile, totaled only US$173 million last year, composed mostly of mineral products, textiles, machinery and chemicals.
“This should not be the trade volume between two large economies. So is there room to grow? Yes. How much room? Maybe 10 times more,” he said, urging Taiwanese businesses to invest more in Turkey. “By doing so, they can expand their businesses to Central Asia, to the Middle East, to Africa.”
When asked what it will take for Turkey and Taiwan to start negotiations on an economic cooperation agreement (ECA), Erikan said no talks about an ECA are currently underway.
“We are not there yet, but there are some other agreements or protocols or MOUs [memorandums of understanding] for cooperation in the pipeline,” he said. “We are working on them, and we are about to finalize the texts, which will help business circles a lot, I believe.”
He said one such agreement is related to investment promotion and protection, but declined to divulge details.
A Taiwanese association and a Turkish group signed an MOU on machine tool cooperation on Thursday and Erikan said he is optimistic that the soon-to-be-launched direct flights are set to further increase business collaboration.
Taipei on Thursday held urban resilience air raid drills, with residents in one of the exercises’ three “key verification zones” reporting little to no difference compared with previous years, despite government pledges of stricter enforcement. Formerly known as the Wanan exercise, the air raid drills, which concluded yesterday, are now part of the “Urban Resilience Exercise,” which also incorporates the Minan disaster prevention and rescue exercise. In Taipei, the designated key verification zones — where the government said more stringent measures would be enforced — were Songshan (松山), Zhongshan (中山) and Zhongzheng (中正) districts. Air raid sirens sounded at 1:30pm, signaling the
The number of people who reported a same-sex spouse on their income tax increased 1.5-fold from 2020 to 2023, while the overall proportion of taxpayers reporting a spouse decreased by 4.4 percent from 2014 to 2023, Ministry of Finance data showed yesterday. The number of people reporting a spouse on their income tax trended upward from 2014 to 2019, the Department of Statistics said. However, the number decreased in 2020 and 2021, likely due to a drop in marriages during the COVID-19 pandemic and the income of some households falling below the taxable threshold, it said. The number of spousal tax filings rebounded
A saleswoman, surnamed Chen (陳), earlier this month was handed an 18-month prison term for embezzling more than 2,000 pairs of shoes while working at a department store in Tainan. The Tainan District Court convicted Chen of embezzlement in a ruling on July 7, sentencing her to prison for illegally profiting NT$7.32 million (US$248,929) at the expense of her employer. Chen was also given the opportunity to reach a financial settlement, but she declined. Chen was responsible for the sales counter of Nike shoes at Tainan’s Shinkong Mitsukoshi Zhongshan branch, where she had been employed since October 2019. She had previously worked
Labor rights groups yesterday called on the Ministry of Labor to protect migrant workers in Taiwan’s fishing industry, days after CNN reported alleged far-ranging abuses in the sector, including deaths and forced work. The ministry must enforce domestic labor protection laws on Taiwan-owned deep-sea fishing vessels, the Coalition for Human Rights for Migrant Fishers told a news conference outside the ministry in Taipei after presenting a petition to officials. CNN on Sunday reported that Taiwanese seafood giant FCF Co, the owners of the US-based Bumble Bee Foods, committed human rights abuses against migrant fishers, citing Indonesian migrant fishers. The alleged abuses included denying
RSS