Costa Rican-Turkish Relations: Origins and Current Situation

Abstract

Costa Rica’s foreign relations with its non-traditional partners has been scarcely studied, resulting in a lack of knowledge about how Costa Rica conducts its foreign policy with these partners from all around the world. This research aims to partially fill this gap by analyzing the origin and subsequent development of the Costa Rican foreign relations towards Turkey. Starting in 1950, the relations were mostly political, constrained by the Cold War context. Later on, specially by Turkish interests on promoting its exports and increasing influence globally, the relations intensified during the second half of the first decade of the twenty first century. By 2014, both countries stablished permanent diplomatic missions. Since then, the relations have been fluctuant, driven mostly by economic and trade interests from both sides, where Costa Rica looks for new markets for its products, international cooperation funds and support to become member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development; while Turkey is mostly interested in negotiating a Free Trade Agreement with Central America, benefiting then its positive trade balance with Costa Rica. Recent trade disagreements regarding banana production in Turkey, one of the main export products of Costa Rica, and the import of steel from Turkey, has slowed down the bilateral relationship.