Pharmaceutical Society of Australia
Offshore Refresher Conference
Ritz-Carlton Ballroom II-III, Istanbul
Opening Ceremony keynote
8.30-9.30 am, 28 April 2012
Australia’s relations with Turkey
Ian Biggs
Australian Ambassador to Turkey
Thank you so much for the invitation to speak – briefly, I promise – on what for
professional reasons must be my favourite topic: Australia’s relations with Turkey. Special
thanks to Warwick, because I know from personal communication how very hard he has
been working on this conference for so very many months. One reason I can be brief is that
he has arranged for you to be briefed later today on the mysteries of Turkey by Andrew
Finkel, before whose expertise I bow. There can be no better guide to this fascinating
country and its remarkable evolution – over the millennia and, more to the point, over the
last ten years of its emergence as one of the world’s leading economies (GDP growth at 8 per
cent, last year), a democratic role-model for the Middle East, and a provider rather than a
consumer both of security and of development assistance.
Of course, we’re different. Turkey is the modern successor to the Hittites, the
Trojans, the Hellenistic Kingdoms, the Roman and Byzantine Empires, the Seljuks and the
Ottomans; and Australia is a federation formed 111 years ago from six British colonies
settled on the far side of the world initially to relieve pressure on the jails of England and
Ireland.
One way in which Turkey and Australia do resemble each other is that our capitals
are not the great seaports and commercial centres. So, roughly speaking, Ankara-IstanbulIzmir equals Canberra-Sydney-Melbourne, though Ankara has a population of four or five
million. Anyway, the Embassies are all in Ankara. Australia also has a Consulate-General
here in Istanbul, and a consulate in Canakkale to look after the Gallipoli pilgrims, of whom
there are several tens of thousands a year. We have a dozen Australia-based officials, from
Foreign Affairs and Trade, Defence, Veterans’ Affairs, Immigration and Citizenship, and the
Trade Commission, and (depending whom you include) forty or fifty locally engaged staff.
Our concerns are the usual: representing Australian Government interests in
dealings with the Turkish government (and, as it happens, the governments of Azerbaijan
and Georgia, to which I have non-resident accreditation – but that’s another story);
promoting Australian trade and investment opportunities; managing migration and
humanitarian intakes to Australia, and visas and passports; looking out for the welfare of
the rapidly rising number of Australians who visit Turkey, and the smaller number living
here for work or family or whatever; defence cooperation; and, uniquely, supporting the
annual Gallipoli commemoration services.
Australian engagement with Turkey began with the landing of the Anzacs on the
Gallipoli Peninsula 97 years ago. I have just come from this year’s commemoration,
attended by prominent Australians from Prime Minister Julia Gillard to Cardinal George
Pell, plus many thousands prepared to brave the overnight freeze before the Dawn Service.
So, while very conscious of the significance of the occasion, I am also somewhat drained –
and shall be satisfied with noting that it is almost unparalleled for a fierce battle to become
the firm basis for friendship, and a celebration of mateship. Perhaps this is because we
acknowledge that the defenders won – so they can be magnanimous in victory. The
Gallipoli campaign also happened to be where Gazi Mustafa Kemal, later President Ataturk,
first took command – so it is part of the Turkish foundation narrative as much as it is of the
Australian.
Not much happened, bilaterally, for fifty years after the First World War. Turkey
stayed neutral in the Second. In the mid-1960s, Australia began expanding the migration
intake beyond the British Isles and Western Europe, to address labour shortages, and Turkey
was one of the countries where migration officers went actively seeking out potential
immigrants. The Embassy was opened in 1968 to facilitate this effort. It seems strange to
recall a time when people had to be cajoled into coming to Australia. And their efforts were
often misunderstood, because Turks were used to the German Gastarbeiter system of
temporary entry for work, and we wanted future Australian citizens and their families.
Anyway, the effort succeeded, and there are now somewhere over 100,000 people of
Turkish heritage in Australia, fully integrated and contributing in every field. Even politics;
I was delighted last year to meet the then Mayor of Moreland municipality, AustralianTurkish Oscar Yildiz. The community has large and high-standard schools, mosques,
business associations, etc. in Melbourne and Sydney, concentrated in Broadmeadows and
Auburn. Some of them return to Turkey for marriage or to retire, but most are so Australian
now that I even have a First Secretary of Turkish background starting in the Embassy
shortly. As you would be aware, Australia has no problem with dual citizenship; we are not
offended by people choosing to maintain attachments to the various cultures of their
respective life-stories.
One of the most effective mechanisms for people-to-people relations is education.
Australia and Turkey have a national-level Memorandum of Understanding on education
cooperation, and approximately twenty Australian universities have direct arrangements
with Turkish universities for academic exchange. There are about 3000 people from Turkey
currently in Australia on student visas – maybe not many compared to the intakes from for
example Malaysia, or the overall total of half a million foreign students; but considering the
strength of long-standing preferences here for degrees from the United States, the United
Kingdom or Germany, we are not dismayed. Turkish society places great weight on
educational qualifications – many Turkish families devote most of their disposable income
to schooling, coaching, and fee-paying “foundation” universities. But there are not enough
places, and there is also a premium placed on learning abroad from reputable institutions,
which we think should mean in Australia.
The growth of Australia-Turkey economic relations in general has been sticky
(Turkey is only Australia’s 40th trading partner), though your presence here is a significant
win in the events and conferences business. Australian firms lead in some important niches
in Turkey – serviced offices, coastal surveillance, aluminium fast ferries, explosives for the
construction industry, gas pipeline management, gold mining, mine safety, automotive
parts, hearing implants… And live-animal exports: when the trade with Indonesia was
suspended last year, Turkey became by default Australia’s largest market for live sheep and
cattle – for breeding and fattening as well as meat. Turkish investors and entrepreneurs
invariably cite distance as the impediment to more, but we have an Air Services Agreement
in place, and the promise of direct Turkish Airlines flights from the middle of this year.
Let me shift a notch up the scale of abstraction, and mention some of the projects we
work on together in the world of international policy. Turkey and Australia are both
members of the G20, the group of leading economies taking responsibility for navigating the
world through the Global Financial Crisis. We are major partners in the International
Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan – Turkey has the largest defence force in
Nato after the United States’. Our Foreign Ministers are active in the nuclear NonProliferation and Disarmament Initiative, which met in Istanbul earlier this week at seniorofficials level. The Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) partnered
with Turkish agencies, principally the Turkish Red Crescent, for the delivery of
humanitarian aid in Libya and Somalia last year. When the evacuation of foreigners from
Libya became advisable last year, some Australians were brought out by the Turkish
government. Turkey co-sponsors the Alliance of Civilizations; Australia the ASEM
Interfaith Dialogue. Our governments are both active participants in the multilateral
system, serving on the UN Security Council whenever we can get there, sending contingents
to peace-keeping operations, strengthening the international trading system through the
World Trade Organization, hosting major international events (such as the P5+1 negotiations
with Iran, in Istanbul this month, and the Commonwealth Heads of Government in Perth
last October), sending our best and brightest to lead international organisations – examples
include Turkey’s Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu at the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and
Australia’s James Wolfensohn, for 10 years President of the World Bank. We call it creative
middle-power diplomacy. We are not afraid of the responsibilities that come with being
regional bastions of stability – in Turkey’s case for south-eastern Europe, the Balkans, the
Caucasus, Central Asia, the Middle East; in Australia’s case for much of Asia and the Pacific
and Indian Oceans.
I shall finish on a personal note, if I may. Before joining the foreign service, I worked
in Jordan as a field archaeologist; so, unsurprisingly, it is the astonishing wealth of Turkey’s
historical and archaeological sites and museums that makes me happiest to be here
(speaking personally, this time). And while Australian historians have tended to focus on
the Gallipoli campaign in writing about Turkey, the Australian archaeologists working here
in the last year have covered the whole range – from Andy Fairbairn’s University of
Queensland team excavating a Pre-Pottery Neolithic village at Boncuklu Kale, to Gocha
Tsetskhladze’s University of Melbourne team working on the Phrygian, Hellenistic and
Roman ruins of Pessinus. As well, that is, as Tony Sagona’s Joint Historical and
Archaeological Survey on the Gallipoli Peninsula.
So: Turkey. On track, according to Prime Minister Erdogan, to being a top-ten
economy by 2023, the centenary of the Republic (Australia is the thirteenth, at present).
Certainly, an exciting country to work in; and, as it happens, one where Australians are held
in a special affection – because of the Anzacs and because of migration. Thanks again for the
invitation to enthuse – and I shall see most of you again at the reception this evening.