Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu inaugurated the new building of the Turkish Consulate in South Africa’s Cape Town on Monday and heaped praise on ties with the African country.
Çavuşoğlu, who is on a five-nation Africa tour, was joined by Western Cape Premier Alan Winde at the opening ceremony. “I am grateful to Mr. Winde for joining us today. It has been a meaningful visit here. We met our citizens and remembered our ancestors who settled here in the past. It was an emotional and proud journey for us,” he said.
He spoke about Ottoman scholar Abu Bakr Efendi who was sent by the Ottoman Empire to South Africa 160 years ago to help Muslims, and praised his work in the country. Çavuşoğlu met descendants of scholars on Sunday and said that the opening of the consulate was a way for Türkiye to inherit the legacy of Abu Bakr Efendi.
The minister said Türkiye ranked fifth in the world in terms of the number of diplomatic missions, at 257. He said the missions helped advance economic and cultural ties. “We established flights between Istanbul and Cape Town that brought our nations closer. We have potential to improve our bilateral relations. We had a trade deficit in favor of South Africa in the past and it is balanced now. What matters is a steady increase in our bilateral trade volume. It rose to $3 billion, by 50%, compared to last year, but there is more potential. I believe we will talk about a figure around $10 billion in the coming years,” he remarked.
