Kyrgyzstan

It’s not often I see a brand of mineral water that sends a frisson down my spine.  But it happens in a meeting with the Deputy Economy Minister in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, when we discuss economic prospects for the mountainous and beautiful ex-Soviet Republic.

The name of the mineral water, bottled in Kyrgyzstan, is ‘Tien Shan Legend’.  Sounds a brilliant brand to me.

I visited the Deputy Economy Minister, together with the Prime Minister’s Office, IFI representatives, business people (including British, Turkish and others) and the National University during a visit to Kyrgyzstan recently to explore trade and investment opportunities.

Kyrgyzstan is a country with immense potential.  Blessed with one of the most democratic political systems in the former Soviet Union and impressive freedom of speech (see eg the Russian text of my interview with business newspaper Delo No 1), the country is a mecca for eco-tourists with its stunning mountain scenery and yak-herders inhabiting mountain plateaus such as that surrounding Lake Son Kul, at 3,500m.

At the same time, Kyrgyzstan’s difficult geography, which makes some travel within the country as well as to neighbouring states comparatively difficult, has meant it has made a slow start to building up its economic development.

Some of the business people I met in Kyrgyzstan told me that it was an easy place to do business compared with some other former Soviet Republics, noting eg that it was straightforward to secure a work permit.  Others told me that the business climate remained difficult and that while the legal framework was excellent, implementation was an issue.

During my visit I also met Turkish business people.  Turkey views Kyrgyzstan as a strategic partner:  There are already 17 flights a week to Istanbul and Turkey has invested heavily in schools and universities in Kyrgyzstan and in major construction projects.  The latter offer opportunities for British companies wishing to partner with major Turkish construction firms.

I was impressed by the quality of students I meet at the international relations faculty of the National University, with their great English and sharp questions.  The latter included whether it would be a good idea for Kyrgyzstan to join the Moscow-led Customs Union.  I replied that this must be a matter for the people of Kyrgyzstan but that this had been a fiercely-debated issue in Ukraine during my previous posting in Kyiv.

With steady economic growth from a low base, there are good opportunities to do business in Kyrgyzstan as well as challenges.               I blogged about both, particularly relating to the mining industry, in February.  Our Embassy in Bishkek and our Trade and Investment team here in Istanbul are ready to help British entrepreneurs wanting to do business there or investors from Kyrgyzstan who want to do business in the UK.  You can contact judith.farnworth@fco.gsi.gov.uk  in Bishkek or ally.gunduz@fco.gov.uk in Istanbul.  We look forward to hearing from you.

Zeugma Mosaic Museum – Gaziantep

The eyes follow you wherever you look.  The gaze is bold, beautiful and serene.

But the image is 1,500 years older than the Mona Lisa.

Gaziantep, a city of 1.3 million people close to the Turkish border with Syria, is often called an “Anatolian Tiger” because of its rapid growth over the past few years.  I visited the city recently with the British Chamber of Commerce in Turkey to meet local political leaders and businesses and talk about trade and investment opportunities in the UK. Several things were striking:

- the rapid economic growth of Gaziantep means there are many important businesses and business people looking for trade and investment opportunities with the UK and other countries;

- those businesses could profit from UK expertise in many areas including innovation, education and training, and design;

- UK Trade and Investment can help Turkish and British businesses profit from business opportunities in Gaziantep;

Gaziantep itself is an awesome, ancient city.  It is one of the oldest continuously-inhabited settlements in the world.  Its Zeugma Museum features an incredible display of Roman-era mosaics including the famous “Gypsy Girl” with the mesmerising eyes.  The increasingly-restored city centre is full of impressive historic caravanserais and other splendid structures.  And it is home to a famous culinary tradition of spicy food blending Middle-Eastern and Turkish influences which the world will shortly discover (more on this later if a certain planned investment in London comes off).

Check out Gaziantep – worth a visit for lots of excellent reasons.

What is GREAT and all over Istanbul?

The answer is the GREAT campaign to deepen business and education links between Britain and Turkey.

I wrote about the launch of the GREAT campaign last month. That included the goals of doubling trade between the UK and Turkey in both directions by 2015, boosting investment and encouraging the brightest and best Turkish students to come and study in British universities.

Now we’re taking the messages further with posters across Istanbul showing the main themes of the campaign including “Business is GREAT”, “Innovation is GREAT”, “Creativity is GREAT” and “Knowledge is GREAT”.

We’ll be doing more GREAT-themed stuff at the Europe Day celebrations on Istiklal in Istanbul on 11 May. Come and join us! And watch out for more GREAT-themed events over the year ahead.

PS Special offer! If any reader spots more than ten GREAT posters around Istanbul do tell me by commenting on this blog or by tweeting a message to @leighturnerFCO and I will be delighted to extend a message of congratulation.

Tajikistan

It’s not called the ‘tunnel of doom’ for nothing.

Half-way through the Anzob tunnel which links the capital of Tajikistan, Dushanbe, to second city Khudzand in the north, the cladding of the tunnel is replaced by bare rocks.  The surface becomes a pot-holed morass of broken concrete and projecting steel reinforcing rods.  Water cascades from above, flooding sections of roadway.

I’m on a visit to our Embassy in Tajikistan to explore trade and investment opportunities for British companies, including working with Turkish companies operating in Central Asia.  Government interlocutors tell me of strong economic growth – around 7.5% in 2012 – and measures to deregulate the economy and introduce new business-friendly legislation.

Business leaders and the donor community tell me there is more to do in terms of implementation of legislation in order to attract the kind of flagship investors which will demonstrate to the global business community that Tajikistan is a safe and stable place to invest.

My visit to Dushanbe and journey to Khudzand with Ambassador Robin Ord-Smith demonstrate both the immense touristic and business potential of Tajikistan and the country’s infrastructural and geographical challenges.

Tajikistan is spectacularly beautiful and consists of 93% mountains including the highest peak in the former Soviet Union. Many exciting infrastructure projects are under way, including a new all-season road crossing to China built by Turkish contractors and half-a-new dozen new bridges to Afghanistan funded by donors.  Local businesses say ‘the Chinese want our lemons and cherries’, including Tajikistan’s famous orange-coloured (and slightly orange-flavoured) lemons.

At the same time, Tajikistan faces challenges from long-running difficulties on its lengthy border with Uzbekistan to the west; and an airport in Dushanbe which needs fundamental reform if it is to become an attractive gateway to the country for international investment.

Training is part of the answer:  The UK Government, including through a VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas) team, is supporting training for local businesses including women entrepreneurs, car mechanics and solar panel and window manufacture to boost entrepreneurship and skills.  There are bold plans for a railway to Turkmenistan via Afghanistan and to upgrade the road to China.  There is huge hydroelectric power potential.

These are exciting times in Tajikistan with big opportunities as well as challenges.  Our Embassy in Dushanbe and our trade and investment team here in Istanbul stand ready to help British entrepreneurs wanting to do business there or investors from Tajikistan heading for the UK.  You can contact Farukh Sultonov via farukh.sultonov@fco.gov.uk in Dushanbe or Ally Gündüz via ally.gunduz@fco.gov.uk in Istanbul.  We look forward to hearing from you.

And the Anzob tunnel is due to be refurbished very soon!

A guest blog by Timothy Fisher, HM Consul at the British Consulate General in İstanbul, Turkey.

Foreign Office Consular staff at work

With 2.5m British visitors and 40,000 British residents in Turkey, Consular work (helping British nationals in need overseas) is a key part of our work in Turkey.  Therefore I was delighted to start work as Consul and Director of Consular Services in Turkey at our Consulate General in Istanbul on 18 February this year.

In the two months since my arrival in Turkey I have travelled around the country to see the work of our Consular staff in Ankara, Istanbul, Izmir, Bodrum, Marmaris, Fethiye and Antalya, first hand. I have been impressed by the compassion and commitment of the teams around the country and the close and effective working relationships they have with the local authorities.

As the tourist season gets underway the Consular teams, like all others involved in the sector, get busier and busier. Part of my role is to ensure that consular staff can spend as much time as possible assisting the people who most need their help and as little time as possible stuck behind a desk.

18 April marks the launch of the FCO’s new Consular Strategy. With its focus on doing more for the most vulnerable, preventing problems before they occur and delivering services more efficiently online, I’m confident that the strategy will support our vision for a service tailored to the needs of the people we assist.

When I met members of the British community in Didim recently, including the editor of Voices newspaper, we discussed the FCO’s registration system for British nationals overseas, LOCATE, its strengths and particularly its weaknesses.

Few people bothered to register and even fewer would tell us when they no longer needed to be registered. Various crises in recent years had demonstrated its limitations in an era of mobile phones, instant messaging and social media. It was a timely discussion as we announce today that LOCATE is to be switched off on 14 May in favour of a more responsive system for assisting British nationals in a crisis.

This is a significant change, and I would urge all British nationals to sign up to alerts and feeds from FCO travel on Twitter  and  Facebook and follow UK in Turkey on Facebook and Twitter as these will be key tools for communication with British nationals which we would use in the event of a natural disaster or other crisis in Turkey.

It’s been a busy start to my time in Turkey and I am looking forward to an interesting and exciting time working here and getting to know this wonderful country and its people over the coming years.

Summer is coming. The number of people wanting to travel is rising. That’s great, particularly for those of you travelling to the United Kingdom – we’re looking forward to seeing you.

The fact that there are lots of people travelling means that here in Istanbul we are processing more visas. To help ensure we provide the best possible service, the Home Office has a set of customer service standards, the most important of which is to complete 90% of routine visa applications in not more than three weeks.

The Home Office even goes one step further, and publishes information on how well each of its teams world-wide is doing in meeting those standards. You can find full data for Istanbul here (go to ‘guide to processing times’ and insert ‘Turkey, Istanbul’). This shows that for March 2013 for routine visas between 99% and 100% of all visas were issued within 15 days; over 96% within ten days; and 32% issued within five days.

Our team makes a big effort to process all visa applications – more than 100,000 a year in Istanbul, of which over 90% are successful – as quickly as possible; and during less busy times of the year we are able to process most visas well within the targets. But as the number of travellers rises in summer our resources are stretched.

What this means for you, if you need a visa to travel to the UK for a visit, is that at all times of year, but especially in the busy summer months, you should if possible start the visa application process at least three weeks before you are due to travel.

But you also need to factor in allowing time to make an appointment at one of our visa application centres – appointments are open up to four weeks in advance and you should not have to wait more than 5 working days for an appointment. I know that sounds a long way ahead, but it’s the best way to minimise the risk of disappointment.

You may if you wish apply up to three months ahead of your intended travel date and also may want to think about applying for a visa that lasts for a longer period (you can apply for 1, 2, 5 and 10 year visas).

Of course not everyone can apply three weeks in advance.  If you’re in a hurry and are travelling for business, there is a priority service available. For TL200, this allows you to have your visa application placed at the front of the queue.

Issuing visas is difficult stuff.  No-one likes applying for visas – I don’t myself – and delays or refusals can understandably leave would-be travellers feeling rejected and upset.

Our hard-working visa staff in Istanbul are constantly striving to provide the best possible service and I am proud of the work they do. Do help us – and help yourself – by making sure you apply in good time and, if you are in a hurry, use the priority service.

G8 Foreign Ministers came together in London last week to discuss conflict resolution and the prevention of sexual violence.

With the current turmoil on its south eastern border, Turkey needs no reminding of the suffering conflict can cause. William Hague has described Syria as potentially the “worst humanitarian catastrophe” of the 21^st century. Last weekend’s attacks in Mogadishu were a terrible reminder of the risks Kızılay and others take in helping to alleviate suffering and build stability in fragile states.

The Foreign Secretary and Angelina Jolie arrived at Rowanda on their visit for the Preventing sexual violence initiative and wider political messages.

Conflicts often cause most harm to the most vulnerable. That is why in May 2012 British Foreign Secretary William Hague announced the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative (PSVI).

The use of rape as a weapon of war is devastating to individuals and communities. The United Nations estimate that in the Democratic Republic of Congo alone as many as 500,000 women have been raped since 1996. In Somalia, more than 1700 rapes were registered in Mogadishu alone between January and November 2012. Yet only a tiny fraction of cases end up in court.

Last week the UK, supported by celebrity Angelina Jolie, secured G8 support for a robust new approach to tackling this devastating aspect of conflict.

Members of the G8 agreed a major declaration recognising that rape and sexual violence are grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. The G8 countries agreed to launch an international protocol which will set out standards for investigating and documenting sexual violence.

The aim is to increase the number of perpetrators brought to justice and to deter future crimes. Pledges worth £23 million will support the initiative.

The UK hopes to use G8 support to help build a strong international coalition against rape and sexual violence in conflict at the UN and more widely. The UK looks forward to working with the Turkish Government to bring the perpetrators of such dreadful crimes to justice.

• Read the 2012 Human Rights and Democracy report
• Follow on twitter @FCOHumanRights with hashtag #hrdreport
• Read the previous FCO Human Rights reports

What do Nicole Scherzinger, Arzu Kaprol, Keira Knightley, Harvey Nichols, Katy Perry and Deniz Berdan have in common?

They’re all involved in Turkish fashion.  Nicole Scherzinger wears Cengiz Abazoğlu.  Arzu Kaprol is an award-winning designer with a corner at Harrods.  Keira Knightley wears Bora Aksu.  Harvey Nichols has two stores in Turkey packed with British and Turkish fashion.  Deniz and Begüm Berdan have designed for Katy Perry.

So it was excellent to have Turkish designers and other top fashion icons attend a fashion event last Friday at the British Consulate-General in Istanbul to celebrate connections between Turkish and British fashion.

The UK-Turkey Fashion Talks (on Twitter: #UKTurkeyFashionTalks) brought together Turkish fashion designers to talk about British fashion and how Turkish fashion players can to use London and the UK to thrive.

Arzu Kaprol described how the UK’s welcoming fashion environment and acceptance of diverse cultures and designers made it a perfect location for new young designers to break through to the big time.

Gül Ağış talked about her London Fashion Week experience and how it fuelled her fashion career.

Mother-and-daughter designer duo Deniz and Begüm Berdan shared their experiences both in working with leading corporates like Starbucks and Disney and the experience of studying among leading young designers in London.

Hamdi Külahçıoğlu talked about Demsa, Harvey Nichols and their British and Turkish brands.

UK Trade and Investment Inward Investment Adviser Simla Çınar explained UKTI services and practical help for Turkish designers setting up businesses in the UK.

The event rounded off with a lively discussion amongst all the participants.

I was delighted the event was so exciting and generated such resonance on Twitter and in the fashion media.  I was particularly interested to hear the views of experienced Turkish fashion designers on why London Fashion Week is the best first step for new young Turkish fashion designers because it’s more open to outsiders and more global than some competitors.

I look forward to the next fashion event at the British Consulate-General Istanbul.  Watch this space.

Part of my job is to meet current and future opinion-formers in Turkey; to learn from them; and to discuss with them the United Kingdom and our relationship with Turkey.

So I always hugely enjoy meeting and talking to the brilliant students who study at Turkish universities.

Today I visited Koç University, some way out to the north of Istanbul, to meet cross-cultural management CEMS students.  I talked a bit about my career in the Diplomatic Service (with a Powerpoint quiz) and answered questions.  The latter were great: everything from cross-cultural negotiation techniques, through the cultural identity of Turkey, to the future of Hong Kong after 2047.  I hope the students found it as interesting, and learned as much, as I did.

Koç was the third Turkish top university I’ve visited to meet the students.  If any other universities would like me to speak to their students, drop me a line by Twitter: @leighturnerFCO.

In late March, the sun beats down on metre-deep snow.  On slopes above, skiers glide.  At a hotel in the town centre, over 500 top Turkish business people and opinion formers have gathered.

Welcome to the Uludağ Economic Summit in Bursa – a fantastic launch-pad for the UK-Turkey GREAT campaign.

The GREAT campaign is all about deepening business and education links between the UK and Turkey.  In particular we want to:

• Double trade between the UK and Turkey (in both directions) by 2015, from the level in 2009;
• Boost British involvement in major Turkish infrastructure projects, and vice-versa;
• Boost Turkish direct investment in the UK (the UK was the biggest direct investor in Turkey in 2012); and
• Encourage the brightest and best Turkish students to come and study in British universities.

The British Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, launched the GREAT campaign at a gala dinner at the Uludağ Summit, along with Turkish Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek and Koç Holding CEO Turgay Durak.  The atmosphere was terrific, as was the (deafening) soundtrack of mostly British rock and pop which followed the launch, eventually drawing many of those present onto the dance-floor – a special kind of co-operation.

Through it all the message was clear:  Britain and Turkey are important partners, and we want to do more together.

You’ll see a lot more events in the GREAT campaign over the coming year.  Watch this space.