Germany’s international capitalist monopoly Siemens won Turkey’s high-speed train tender after Siemens CEO Joe Kaeser’s visit to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Siemens won a tender including ten sets of a high-speed train, overcoming the other four rival companies such as CAF and Alstom. Siemens won the tender with an offer of €349 million with the financial support of the Islamic Development Bank at the value of €312 million.
Joe Kaeser, the CEO of Siemens, visited Erdoğan on February 15 at the presidential palace in Ankara. It is no surprising that Siemens won the tender after a visit to Erdoğan, who acts like the CEO of Turkey, as he previously said, “I am liable to market my country.”
Siemens entered the Turkish market of trains after it sold seven high-speed trains to Turkish State Railways in 2013. Moreover, Siemens won a billion-dollar wind energy tender, YEKA project, last year even when the Turkish-German relations were stressful.
The agreements between Erdoğan and Siemens show that the mutual capitalist relations are of importance despite the hypocritical diplomatic tensions and crises between Turkey and Germany.
Most of Turkey's assets in the field of oil, energy, telecommunication, education and health have been privatized during the rule of Erdoğan’s AKP government.
