This year, Turkey marks the 96th year of the foundation of the Turkish Republic, the year in which Turkey transformed from the Ottoman Empire to modern Turkey.

In October 1923, the Grand National Assembly of Turkey declared the country to be a republic.

The caliphate, an Islamic State under the stewardship of Islamic leader known as a Caliph, was abolished the following year and all members of the Ottoman dynasty were expelled from the country.

In April 1924, a constitution which could later make Turkey a purely secular state was adopted.

Ahead of the celebrations in Rwanda, The New Times’ Julius Bizimungu caught up with Burcu Çevik, Turkish Ambassador to Rwanda to dissect Turkey’s relations with Rwanda, economic partnership and the country’s foreign policy with Africa.

Below are excerpts:

It’s been a few months when you were posted to Rwanda to represent your country; how has been the experience so far?

This is my first experience as an ambassador and I’m really honoured that I am starting that experience in Rwanda, particularly because to me, Rwanda is an exceptional country.

It has a lot of experience to share with the world in terms of ensuring political stability, the cohesion of the people, gender equality, putting people fast and many other aspects.

What you have achieved in the past 25 years is proving the world that change is possible. That’s why I believe I have a lot of things to learn from Rwanda and Rwandan people and that’s why I am very privileged to start my career as an ambassador in Rwanda.

Of course, we have 42 embassies in Africa and we are showing more interest in enhancing our relations with African countries.

Out of the 42 embassies, 12 of them are administered by women ambassadors, which Rwanda is part of.

As a woman ambassador in Rwanda, I don’t find difficulties because wherever I visit there are many influential women figures who become my counterparts. It is giving a lot of pleasure to work with my counterparts in Rwanda.

It is going to be a fruitful experience for me, especially (learning) how you approach challenges in the Rwandan way, which really attracts my attention a lot. I have great respect for Rwandan people in terms of finding solutions to their own problems.

You are lucky that you have a strong leader, President Paul Kagame, and a devoted society. That’s why in the world public opinion, Rwanda was perceived with the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, but now I think they are perceived with the change they have created.

How do you describe Turkey’s relations with Rwanda?

We see Rwanda as a reliable partner in Africa. Turkey has started its Africa strategy, of course, it was open in 1988 but it has become a partnership strategy as relations have got more enriched.

Rwanda is one of the countries we find a reliable partner with its political stability, security and business-friendly environment. You make really a difference.

We opened our embassy in 2014 but our relations did not start in 2014. We covered Rwanda a longtime from Kinshasa, from Nairobi and latest from Uganda. But we thought it was the right time to open the embassy.

What do you mean exactly when you say Rwanda is your reliable partner?

It means that Turkey aims at more economic and trade cooperation with Rwanda, it means that Turkey aims at more people-to-people contacts with Rwanda, Turkey aims at cooperation in different areas like education, agriculture, health, energy, and mining, among others.

The aim is to bring our countries together.

Turkish Airlines started flying to Kigali every day since 2012, which actually shortens the distance between our two countries.

I think the airline currently flies to 38 countries and to 56 destinations in Africa and Rwanda was one of the oldest ones.

You are just the second residence ambassador of Turkey to Rwanda. What do you see as your role to advance the common agenda between Rwanda and Turkey?

My task is to make sure that our relations flourish as established by my predecessor.

We have similarities in terms of the parts we have passed through in the past. The Turkish Republic was founded in 1923 and very soon we are going to celebrate our 96th year of the anniversary of the foundation of our republic.

Turkish republic was founded in a very tough environment and we passed through a very tough transformation in Turkey. The transition from the Ottoman Empire to modern the Turkish Republic was not so easy. We know how difficult it is to make a change.

At that time, the Turkish economy was devastated, we had nothing in terms of industry, we had nothing in terms of natural resources, but we had only our own people.

The Modern Turkish Republic used its human resources to rebuild the country.

In that respect, I see much similarities with Rwanda.

We are a G20 member, we are a big power in terms of economy and we have influence. In that, we know how to establish and transform institutions, starting from small and medium-sized enterprises.  That’s why I believe Turkish experience would be useful for Rwanda.

Plus, our relations with Africa has never been the same as that of our other allies. We are here for partnership.

During the Ottoman Empire, we had close relations with Northern Africa but we didn’t have relations with Sub Saharan Africa. So we are getting here and we are establishing our relations based on mutual respect and cooperation.

How has been the journey since you opened the embassy in 2014?

Turkish Airlines shortened the distance between our two countries and based on that, we opened the new embassy in 2014. Since then, we have signed many bilateral agreements (currently the number is 20), ranging from political cooperation to defence and training education, agriculture and many other areas.

My role is to put these agreements into implementation.

How would you describe the cooperation in those areas?

I think we have excellent relations. Let me start with political relations; this year we hosted Foreign Affairs Minister Richard Sezibera in Turkey. This was the first time we hosted the Rwanda Foreign Affairs Minister in our country.

During the visit, we signed three agreements on visa exemption for official passports, tourism cooperation and a Memorandum of Understanding on the training of diplomats between the two foreign ministries.

Turkey is also supporting Rwanda in all multilateral forums; in most of the regional and international issues, we share similar ideas, because Turkish foreign policy is also based on ‘peace at home, peace abroad’ and I think similarly Rwanda pursues peace and security in its region and in the world.

In economic and trade relations, it is also something that started long ago. Today, when people search about Rwanda, I think the first thing they encounter is the Kigali Convention Centre and now Kigali Arena. Both of these two symbol buildings were built by Turkish contractors.

Apart from that, for the past four years, Turkey investments to Rwanda were amounting to $400 million, which makes 13 per cent of Rwanda’s total foreign direct investments.

Turkish people are active in agriculture, services, construction and mining. In the future, we would like to contribute more to the production capacity of Rwanda and we are encouraging more Turkish businesses to come to Rwanda to manufacture here.

With the continental free trade area, I think it will be important to take advantage of that agreement to come and produce from here and benefit from the entire region.

Of course, in terms of trade volumes, we are a little bit below the potential. Construction materials from Turkey are coming and Rwandan exports are going to Turkey, but this can be enriched. So, we need to work hard to increase bilateral trade between our two countries.

We signed recently tourism agreement and I think we can now work more to increase the number of tourists coming to Rwanda and those going to Turkey. It is not so difficult since we issue visas from here and we have Turkish Airlines flying between the two capitals.

What else do you cooperate in?

Well, another important area we cooperate in is defence and security. In June, we hosted the Chief of Defence Staff General Patrick Nyamvumba, and I’m very happy to say there are regular consultations on military cooperation, but also between our national police institutions.

Turkey is contributing to military and police training in Rwanda.

When I visited General Inspector of Police Dan Munyuza, he told me the total number of police officers who received training from their Turkish counterparts has reached 25,000 and it is increasing every month.

Education is another area that we cooperate with. Turkey has been granting scholarships to many countries including Rwanda. We have granted more than 180 scholarships to Rwandan students.

We also have a project in mind, which is to build a school in Kigali to give technical and vocational education training to Rwandans. This is going to be important because Rwanda is also relying very much on human resources, requiring quality skills.

In order to institutionalise our cooperation, I already proposed to put in place a joint economic commission between the two countries that will get together regularly to foresee our economic and trade relations to see how we can improve the situation.

Talk to us about Turkey’s foreign policy with Africa...

Turkey wants to expand its relations, going beyond its immediate vicinity. That’s why we have strategies for Asia, Latin America and Africa. I think our African partnership policy is one of the most successful so far.

We have opened 42 embassies in order to increase diplomatic presence in Africa and very soon this number will be 45. We see that reaping benefits; for instance, our trade volume with Africa increased fourfold in the last ten years. Our trade volume was $25 billion in 2018.

Our aim is to build relations with Africa based on mutual respect and cooperation, taking into account mutual national interests.

How do you maintain the reputation of your country with the on-going developments?

The developments in Syria have not been good and this has created certain tensions on Turkish foreign policy. First of all, we had to take care of millions of refugees coming from Syria.

The recent operation that we started in Syria is important because we wanted to secure the southern border of our country, so what we wanted to do was to clear the region from the terrorist organization.

Unfortunately, the result of those developments was the appearance of many terrorist organisations operating in that region. All of these terrorist groups are close to our borders and they are causing existential security threats to Turkey.

Of course, we had shared our security concerns with our allies rising from the existence of these terrorist organisations in the region, but at one point you have to take care of yourself and that’s why we started that operation in October.

We informed all our allies about our intentions in a proper way and the only intention was to ensure border security, and it’s our legitimate right to do so. The operation was conducted under article 59 of the United Nations and also the relevant Security Council resolutions on the fight against terrorism.

editor@newtimesrwanda.com