ANKARA 

Türkiye will continue to do its part to make the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) "more effective," Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Tuesday.

"Türkiye will continue to do its part to make the ECO more effective and attain its true share in the world economy. We know that this is an ambitious goal," Cavusoglu said at the 26th Meeting of the ECO Council of Ministers in the Uzbek capital Tashkent.

Cavusoglu said that with a strong will, the organization's members will strengthen it in the face of the current challenging global environment.

The ECO is a political and economic intergovernmental organization founded by Türkiye, Pakistan and Iran in 1985 to serve as a platform to discuss and improve development and promote trade and investment opportunities. It has seven other members: Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

"Today, the global economy faces major challenges. Food and energy prices are constantly rising. There are disruptions and changes in global supply chains.​ Global economic growth has not fully recovered. To overcome these challenges, we should accelerate our economic cooperation," Cavusoglu said.

He added that member states should enhance transportation and logistics networks and make full use of instruments to enhance regional trade such as the Economic Cooperation Organization Trade Agreement (ECOTA).

"We should continue our efforts in 2023 to turn the ECO into a more effective and visible organization," he stressed.

Turning to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), which is among the three observers of the ECO, Cavusoglu said: "It is, in fact, the most active observer in its contributions to our joint work. For the past 11 years, our Turkish Cypriot brothers participated and spoke at all high-level ECO meetings."

Sideline meetings

On the meeting's sidelines, Cavusoglu met with his Pakistani counterpart Bilawal Bhutto Zardari to discuss economic and defense cooperation as well as regional developments.

He also met with Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyoyev.

“Conveyed greetings of President @RTErdogan to President Mirziyoyev of brotherly #Uzbekistan. Strengthening our strategic cooperation,” Cavusoglu said on Twitter.

Cavusoglu also discussed relations between Türkiye and Uzbekistan in the fields of economy, culture and education with Bakhtiyor Saidov, the Central Asian country's foreign minister.

After a separate closed-door meeting on the sidelines with Tahsin Ertugruloglu, the foreign minister of the TRNC, Cavusoglu also expressed Türkiye's full support for the TRNC.