Hungary and Turkey regard each other with mutual respect, Minister for National Economy Mihály Varga, who is also MP for the 2nd and 3rd districts of Budapest, emphasised at the inauguration of a language lab in the Óbuda Secondary Grammar School. In the facility, funded by the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA), state-of-art equipment will assist language learning.
The project realized in the school shows how multifaceted Hungarian-Turkish relations are, Mihály Varga said in his speech. Improving economic relations, developing educational and cultural cooperation as well as the mutual reverence of historic sites from a common past reflect mutual recognition, he added.
Thanks to vivid and high-profile Turkish-Hungarian political relations, we are also attaining achievements in the field of economy, he stressed. The increasingly successful Turkish economy has found in Hungary a partner that is an EU member state with a steadily developing economy. Hungary closed the previous year with GDP growth of 2.5 percent and we also expect a similarly good performance for this year, Mihály Varga said. As he pointed out, Turkey has been one of Hungary’s major trade partners outside the EU.
The Minister said cooperation was exemplary between the two countries regarding the restoration and maintenance of historic sites. As of this year, several Ottoman-era sites are to be renovated in Budapest, Eger, Pécs and Szigetvár, he added.
Speaking of the TIKA-sponsored project in the Óbuda Secondary Grammar School, the Minister noted that cooperation between the two nations has not been limited only to government-level partnership. The school has always placed a special emphasis on the teaching of foreign languages. As of autumn 2017, pupils can pick Turkish as one of the foreign languages they want to learn. Mihály Varga stressed that those people can mainly expect success on the labour market who learn – besides the most popular foreign languages that are practically obligatory nowadays – a less widely-spoken language, such as Turkish.
(Ministry for National Economy)
