Introduction

Turkey's active participation in the process of European integration has a long history reaching back to the end of the 1950's. Since that time mutual relations have undergone various stages of development in which political circumstances have often slowed down otherwise naturally developing co-operation.

The past decade has brought two significant milestones in this area - in 1999 Turkey gained EU candidate country status and six years later EU accession negotiations were commenced. In tandem with the political discussions business contacts and mutually beneficial co-operation between companies in various sectors have also prospered.

Interel, which is a member of a European group concerned with strategic communications, maintains and develops long-term relations with the Turkish state authorities and organisations which bring together the various industrial and services sectors. For this reason it wishes to support Czech-Turkish dialogue in commercial and business co-operation. The first step in strengthening existing bilateral relations is international conference attended by top personalities from the political and business environments of both countries. The reasoning behind these events is to present Turkey as an interesting opportunity for Czech and other European companies either in terms of participation in privatisation projects or in drawing pre-accession EU assistance. It also wants to support interest in investment opportunities and provide an environment for developing new contacts.

The focus of the organisers, Interel is to develop practical and concrete possibilities for co-operation between the political and business spheres of both countries. There will be other annual conferences after the initial conference, being held alternatively in Turkey and the Czech Republic. Each of these events will have a theme selected according to the actual demands from business circles and will also attempt to reflect important international political issues. Attention will particularly be given to issues concerning privatisation in Turkey, support for commerce, assistance and experience sharing on EU accession and also preparing Turkey's business sector for competitive pressures from the Europe Union. This year's Prague conference will focus on the energy, transport and logistics sectors.

The conference will be held under the auspices of:

Mr. Alexandr Vondra,
Deputy Prime Minister for European Affairs, The Government of The Czech Republic

His Excellency Mr. Koray Targay,
Ambassador of the Republic of Turkey to the Czech Republic