Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced that Ankara is “ready” to establish its own trade mechanism with Iran, allowing companies from the two neighbouring countries to continue doing “legitimate” business amid punishing US sanctions.
Erdogan made the statement on Thursday during a bilateral meeting with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on the sidelines of the three-party talks on Syria in the Russian resort city of Sochi, according to Iran’s Mehr news agency.
“Turkey is ready to join the SPV (Special Purpose Vehicle) and create a similar bilateral mechanism for trade cooperation with Iran,” he said, referring to INSTEX (Instrument In Support of Trade Exchanges), a new body set up by the European Union that process payments outside of the regular banking institution.
“Multilateral cooperation with Iran on different issues has had positive achievements and Turkey is ready to expand this cooperation to other countries in the region,” Erdogan added.