TANZANIA and Turkey yesterday signed a total of nine partnership agreements aimed at accelerating bilateral ties between the two countries in various areas including transportation and communication.
In transportation, the revamped national carrier Air Tanzania Company Limited (ATCL) will now work together with Turkish Airlines, and in communication, the state-run Tanzania Broadcasting Cooperation (TBC) will do likewise with its Turkish counterpart broadcaster.
Other areas of cooperation penned in Dar es Salaam yesterday between the two governments led by their leaders, President John Magufuli and visiting Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, are defence and security where local personnel will receive special training in Turkey.
Health, education, research, development, tourism and industrialisation are other key areas also earmarked for much improvement under joint initiatives between the two countries.
Speaking after the signing ceremony, President Magufuli said trade between Tanzania and Turkey stood at $190 million by last year, and added that there is a need for the two countries to enhance cooperation for mutual benefit.
“Our countries share various historical similarities and your (Erdogan’s) visit is a sign that the relationship between us is growing and there is a lot that we can benefit from each other,” he remarked.
He requested the Turkish leader to lend his backing to a Tanzanian government loan request through Exim Bank of Turkey to help finalise the construction of a section of the 400-plus kilometre Standard Gauge Railway project.
According to Magufuli, the tender for the rail project – one of his government’s pet ventures - is still up in the air and one of the companies competing for it is from Turkey.
In response, President Erdogan said his country sees much potential in cooperating with Tanzania in various areas.
“If we join hands, we can achieve more than this, because the current trade figures do not reflect the real potential that exists...we can reach at least $500 million a year if we cooperate fully,” he said.
The Turkish leader’s two-day official visit to Tanzania was his first sojourn in Africa since his own country witnessed the bloodiest coup attempt in its political history on July 15 last year, organised by the Fethullah Gülen group.
Commenting on the attempted coup incident, Erdogan called on the Magufuli administration and other African governments to help in discouraging the Gulen movement in Africa.
Reports suggested before the trip that Erdogan planned to talk to African leaders about the "intense activities" of the Gulen movement on the continent. He will also visit Mozambique and Madagascar as part of his continental tour.
Following July's failed coup, Turkey launched a major crackdown that has so far seen more than 43,000 people detained over alleged links to Gulen and his Hizmet movement.
But Gulen himself, a former Erdogan ally, vehemently denies he was behind the attempted coup. A reclusive figure, he has lived in self-imposed exile in the US state of Pennsylvania since 1999.
Hizmet describes itself as promoting Islam through charity efforts and educational work in countries stretching from Turkey to Africa and Central Asia to the United States.
Meanwhile, in an interview with The Guardian on the sidelines of yesterday’s State House function, the Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, Prof Jumanne Maghembe, said the tourism agreement signed between the two countries will help Tanzania learn more about what Turkey is doing to attract an average of 10 million tourists per year, compared to Tanzania’s own one million.
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