It is difficult to find another country like the Republic of Turkey, with its strong state tradition of 1,000 years and 7,000-year historical reservoir of production, trade and culture. Alongside China and India, we are one of the few countries with economic, demographic and historical records dating back to the first century. This priceless historical and social wealth places Turkey among the top five rare countries with claims, projects and knowledge in the fields of political, security, trade, public, civilization and cultural diplomacy. Turkey boasts 229 diplomatic mission representatives, leaving behind countries with much stronger economic opportunities, ranking it fifth in the world.
The fact that Turkish Airlines ranks first among global airlines flying to more than 300 destinations from a single point in the world and that we are aiming to achieve 200 million passengers in 2030 with Istanbul Airport (IGA) are both vitally important in terms of the logistics of Turkey's diplomatic skills. We are carrying out our founding and driving role in all of the leading international organizations to guide many developing countries with our success as a role model and to bring lasting peace around the world with our political diplomacy. We are one of the three most indispensable countries in NATO with our finesse in security diplomacy and our determination to fight terrorism.
With the Turkey Exporters Assembly (TİM) and the 85,000 exporters under our roof, we are executing trade diplomacy with 223 countries, special economic zones and free zones, enabling the Turkish flag to fly around the world and break record after record; all the while we are entering a long-term cooperation process with the U.S. with a $100 billion trade volume target and answering similar requests from Russia and China, and finalizing a free trade agreement with Japan.
With Turkey's nongovernmental and aid organizations providing services on an international scale, we are conducting strong, effective civilization and public diplomacy. In Africa, Asia, Central Asia, the Balkans and the Caucasus, we help hundreds of thousands, even millions, of people smile with various projects, from aid following natural disasters to projects addressing poverty, education, health and infrastructure investments. Recently, we saw success in effectively and positively explaining Turkey's global opportunities and capabilities to the world and to our own country effectively and creating a strong awareness with our Directorate of Communications.
Another successful field is cultural diplomacy. With the art sector and Turkey's leading artists, we are carrying out ambitious efforts in cultural diplomacy with Turkey's world-renown artists. The Ara Güler Exhibition series, which is one of the projects carried out in this field, is one of the most important examples of this. It is currently at its fourth stop in New York, following London, Paris and Kyoto, with its opening held parallel to the United Nations General Assembly. It is important that well-known intellectual and cultural experts from the U.S. participated in the "Intercultural Chat on Ara Güler" panel. All of these projects carried out since 2010 will overshadow any anti-Turkey campaigns over the next one to two years.
Trump's crackdown on globalists
In the 1980s, when signs and arguments pointed to the Soviet Union's inevitable end, the "fathers," leading thinkers of capitalism and the Atlantic Alliance, pushed to launch globalism by effectively using the media resources at their disposal. The main argument was to multiply the profitability of international companies and to raise the barons of capitalism to a new level of wealth by liberalizing world trade and lifting the walls in front of international capital.
The past 30 years have been a period where elite with special privileges imposed their own truths; however, the numerous issues caused by globalization, which was not wanted by the vast majority of world citizens, has created a future for the world full of uncertainties and concerns. In many parts of the world, humanitarian disasters were triggered, and we have fallen into a global political economy that benefits vigilante financial barons and arms industry barons and that includes amorphous, worrisome asymmetric threats. The leaders of this plot were a group of globalists who settled in Washington 35 years ago.
This dangerous structure, which grasped the dark corridors of the U.S. capital like an octopus, has also triggered a rising rebellion in a large part of American society today. President Donald Trump took office by responding to exactly this need, and he started a war against the globalists. Now, he is paying for this war through heavy attacks from the media and impeachment threats from the globalist group in U.S. Congress. After the statement "the future will be patriots, not globalists" in the U.N. General Assembly, the green light was given in Congress for an impeachment process.
Today, the globalists have lost the first round. In response, they are adopting a careless, rash approach that risks raising tensions worldwide. However, a more patriotic approach is on the rise, and they will remain defeated until a globalization process that embraces the whole world is accepted.