TASHKENT, October 30. /Dunyo IA/. Alisher Kadirov, head of department of the Institute for Strategic and Regional Studies under the President of Uzbekistan (ISRS), expressed this opinion during the Uzbek-Turkish roundtable on the topic: OTS and prospects of Uzbek-Turkish strategic relations, reports Dunyo IA correspondent.

As the ISRS expert noted, in the era of global geopolitical shifts, OTS is becoming a key player in the Eurasian space, uniting the Turkic countries into a powerful economic and political alliance. "Against this background, the rapidly developing ties between Türkiye and Uzbekistan stand out especially brightly," he said.

It was noted that in recent years, Uzbek-Turkish relations have made a qualitative leap, reaching the level of a comprehensive strategic partnership. According to the expert, this implies not only the expansion of economic ties, but also the deepening of political dialogue, cultural exchange, and cooperation in the field of security.

In this context, he focused on the dynamic development of bilateral trade, economic and investment cooperation, specifying that over the past five years, the volume of mutual trade between the two countries has increased by 1.3 times, the number of enterprises with Turkish capital in Uzbekistan has tripled and reached 1898, and the volume of FDI from Türkiye has increased 10 times. Over the past year, 260 new Uzbek-Turkish joint ventures have been created, which brought Türkiye to third place in the number of joint ventures in Uzbekistan among other partners.

Thus, the ISRS representative concluded, Uzbekistan and Türkiye demonstrate a strong commitment to strengthening trade ties. Despite the successes already achieved, both countries set even more ambitious goals. It is planned to reduce customs tariffs within the framework of the preferential trade agreement in order to increase trade turnover to $ 5 billion.

"In the long term, we are aiming for an even more impressive result – to increase the volume of bilateral trade to $10 billion. This level of trade turnover has the potential to take the partnership between the countries to a qualitatively new level, making it one of the key factors in the economic development of the region," the expert concluded.

For information: the event organized by the Development Strategy Center jointly with the Turkish Marmara Group Foundation on November 29 of this year in Tashkent was also attended by representatives of the University of World Economy and Diplomacy, Tashkent State University of Oriental Studies. The Turkish side was represented by Ambassador of Türkiye to Uzbekistan and Turkish parliamentarians.