THE GLOBAL WINDOW OF TURKISH FOOD AND AGRICULTURE The Global Window of Turkish Food and Agriculture Sector
Related Articles
“Akdeniz University Institute of Science and Technology Director Professor Dr. Orhan Özçatalbaş states that the strategic importance of agriculture and food diplomacy surges day by day…”
Essentially, the aim of agricultural diplomacy is to promote international co-operation. Accordingly, threats and opportunities, strengths and weaknesses constitute the background of agricultural and food diplomacy.
In a world without food security, conflicts, chaos and migrations are inevitable. Today, in the field of agriculture and food; optimising the interaction between climate change as a threat and sustainability as a necessity has become a necessity. However, the issue of Food Safety is also important due to its different effects.
As an example, the EU, in addition to protecting the members of the union and regulating the relations between the members with the policies it implements, develops strategies to determine the relations with third countries through Eurep-Globalgap and then Green Consensus documents.
The EU has the potential to contribute to global food security through sustainable development and other aid programmes. In this context, it needs to develop food diplomacy under the auspices of the European External Action Service and security policy and that it needs a food diplomacy that takes into account all the links of food to a wide range of security issues. The EU also argues that the fight against global food insecurity should enhance co-operation with all actors with shared interests and that this means taking into account not only political stakeholders but also for-profit and non-profit stakeholders, from large transnational corporations to small and medium-sized enterprises and NGOs.
“WE COME FIRST IN AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION”
Agricultural diplomacy is used effectively by countries such as the USA, China, Brazil, the Netherlands and recently Türkiye. By the way, Türkiye ranks first in Europe in terms of agricultural production value (output) and in the top 10 across the world. This indicates a significant potential and it is clear that there is an impact in countries demanding Turkish agricultural products with qualifications in terms of quality and food safety.
In addition, Türkiye, which ensured the signing of the Istanbul Memorandum with its successful policies that initiated and carried out the negotiations and ensured co-operation especially during the Russia-Ukraine war process, has gained prestige with the agricultural diplomacy it has implemented at the international level with the Grain Corridor Agreement. Therefore, as the Russia-Ukraine war threatened the world grain supply security, Türkiye, together with the UN, achieved diplomatic success in the field of agriculture by getting the countries of interest to sign the Istanbul Memorandum/Grain Corridor Agreement. This has been recorded as a historical example of negotiation and diplomacy.
“HAS A DISCIPLINARY CHARACTERISTIC”
Finally, although academic explanations on gastro diplomacy, food diplomacy or culinary diplomacy within the scope of international relations discipline are limited, it has a very old history historically. In this context, in general food and culinary diplomacy in particular are becoming increasingly prominent as an official soft power or public diplomacy tool and the subject has a newly developing interdisciplinary feature…
By Professor Dr. Orhan Özçatalbaş
