Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Wednesday Turkey is looking into establishing new trade mechanisms with Iran, like the INSTEX system set up by European countries to avoid U.S. sanctions reimposed last year on exports of Iranian oil.
Cavusoglu reiterated Turkey’s opposition to the sanctions and said Ankara and neighboring Iran needed to keep working to raise their bilateral trade to a target of $30 billion, around triple current levels.
“Along with the existing mechanisms, we evaluated how we can establish new mechanisms, like INSTEX...how we can remove the obstacles before us and before trade,” Cavusoglu told a news conference after talks with his Iranian counterpart Javad Zarif.
“What is important here is the solidarity and determination between us,” he added.
France, Germany and Britain have opened a new channel for non-dollar trade with Iran to avert sanctions, dubbed The Instrument In Support Of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX).
Cavusoglu did not go into details about the new mechanisms but Turkey has a track record of using national currencies in international trade. In October 2017, the Turkish and Iranian central banks formally agreed to trade in their local currencies after using the euro for settlements in the past.