Türkiye completed the first century of its diplomatic relations with Japan within the scope of the "Far Countries Strategy" by developing cooperation in various fields such as trade, investment and tourism.

In addition to the recent mutual visits and economic cooperation meetings between the two countries, last year Japanese Crown Prince Fumihito and Crown Princess Kiko paid an official visit to Türkiye as part of the 100th anniversary of the establishment of Turkish-Japanese diplomatic relations.

Following this visit, last month, the Speaker of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, Numan Kurtulmuş, also visited Japan.

In this period when high-level bilateral talks gained momentum, commercial diplomacy also gained momentum. In this context, the 27th Term Türkiye-Japan Business Council Joint Meeting was held in Tokyo last year. It was seen that these contacts were also reflected in the export figures to Japan.

While Türkiye's exports to Japan were 441.2 million dollars in 2020, when the Covid-19 outbreak occurred, this amount increased to 664.4 million dollars in 2022.

Exports to Japan increased by 62.6 percent last year compared to 2020, reaching $717.6 million. Thus, Türkiye's exports to Japan reached a record level.

Imports, on the other hand, declined slightly last year to $4.7 billion, bringing the trade volume between the two countries to around $5.5 billion on the 100th anniversary.

While the focus was on increasing cooperation between the two countries in various tourism areas, it was observed that the number of Japanese tourists exceeded the level before the Covid-19 outbreak.

In this context, the number of Japanese tourists coming to Türkiye, which was 81,931 in 2018 and 103,320 in 2019, decreased to 19,122 in 2020 and 7,153 in 2021, when the pandemic was intense.

With the decrease in the impact of the epidemic, 30,610 Japanese tourists visited the country in 2022 and 78,782 in 2023. This number increased to 134,697 last year. Thus, the highest number of tourists in the last 10 years was reached.