The Indonesian envoy to Ankara on Thursday hailed the future of Türkiye’s partnership with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) at an event in the Turkish capital.
”ASEAN is the region of the future, and ASEAN-Türkiye Partnership is the partnership of the future,” Ambassador Achmad Rizal Purnama told guests at the ASEAN Day celebration in Ankara.
Key figures from Türkiye attended the event hosted by Indonesia and the ASEAN Ankara Committee, including Deputy Foreign Minister Burhanettin Duran, Turkish MPs, ASEAN member state ambassadors, ASEAN Dialogue Partner Countries’ Ambassadors, as well as Turkish government officials, business leaders and media representatives.
Touring the association’s role as an “anchor of peace, stability and prosperity” in the Indo-Pacific region, Purnama called for priority cooperation and inclusive collaboration between several sectors like defense, energy and digitalization, to build a stronger Türkiye-ASEAN partnership that he said should become a force for global stability.
For his part, Deputy Minister Duran expressed Ankara’s readiness to become a “trustworthy partner” to ASEAN in all sectors, noting that Türkiye believes cooperation would benefit “not only the peoples of the two nations, but also to the stability of respective regions, and to the world.”
After taking over the chair of the ASEAN Ankara Committee in July 2024, the Indonesian Embassy in Ankara has successfully organized two important meetings between ASEAN Ambassadors and Turkish high government officials, namely with Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and with the Secretary of Defense Industry Agency, Haluk Görgün.
As a part of the continuous efforts to “put ASEAN in the radar screen of Türkiye,” the Indonesian Embassy also plans to hold an academic symposium and ASEAN Cultural Day through collaboration with a Turkish university next November.
ASEAN-Türkiye cooperation entered a new phase following the signing of the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC) in Southeast Asia on July 23, 2010, at the 43rd ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Vietnam.
In the same year, Türkiye’s representative in Jakarta also received accreditation for the ASEAN Secretariat and ASEAN granted Türkiye the status of “Sectoral Dialogue Partner” on Aug. 5, 2017.
Fidan reiterated Türkiye’s commitment to strengthening relations with ASEAN at the 57th ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting and the 6th Türkiye-ASEAN Sectoral Dialogue Partner Trilateral Meeting in Laos last month.
