TURKEY-SYRIA FTA TO ENTER INTO FORCE

C O N F I D E N T I A L ANKARA 006352 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/07/2011 TAGS: ETRD PREL TU SY SUBJECT: TURKEY-SYRIA FTA TO ENTER INTO FORCE REF: ANKARA 1568 ¶1. (C) Turkish Foreign Ministry and Foreign Trade Undersecretariat officials confirmed a November 6 Anatolian News Agency report that the Turkey-Syria "free trade" agreement signed in December 2004 will come into force January 1, 2007. The agreement was also published in the Official Gazette, which was the last step necessary to bring the agreement into force. The announcement follows a meeting of a Turkey-Syria economic commission on November 2 in Gaziantep and Aleppo that also reportedly resulted in agreement on border infrastructure projects. ¶2. (C) We had understood that the Turkish government was delaying the agreement's entry into force until the European Union moved ahead with its parallel association agreement with Syria, ratification of which had been delayed for political reasons. The MFA and FTU officials provided no insight on why the GOT decided to move ahead to bring the agreement into effect now. The agreement is limited in scope and is not expected by Turkey's business community to result in significant new bilateral trade (see ref for details). Visit Ankara's Classified Web Site at http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/eur/ankara/ WILSON