His remarks were made on the sidelines of the 58th ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting and Related Meetings, held in Malaysia.

Hasan noted that, as a sectoral dialogue partner, Türkiye played a constructive role in areas such as technology, security, defense, and agriculture, in addition to offering scholarships to students from ASEAN member states.

He added that numerous countries have expressed interest in becoming ASEAN sectoral or full dialogue partners.

“Many countries have requested and are waiting to become ASEAN sectoral or full dialogue partners,” Hasan stated, “but we imposed a moratorium because there are simply too many requests.”

The minister specified that ASEAN currently has 11 dialogue partners, and any new additions must be carefully considered to avoid its structure´s overloading.

The 58th ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting comprises 24 meetings at ministerial level, including meetings with ASEAN dialogue and sectoral partners, and runs for four days from Tuesday.

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