Arab dessert lovers flock to local website for baklava

KONYA - Anatolia News Agency

Companies from the Arab world are ordering tons of baklava and other traditional Turkish desserts like şekerpare and revani at a Turkish online portal.

Konya-based Turkish dessert website www.turkishexporter.net is receiving much interest from Arab sweet-tooths, who are flocking to the site to purchase traditional Turkish desserts like baklava, revani and şekerpare.

“Our orders include Turkish dolma, diapers, olive oil, curtains, decorative items and electrical items. In recent days, most of our demand is for Turkish desserts. Arab companies, in particular, are buying up tons of Turkish desserts,” said the executive board deputy chairman of the website, Nusrettin Yıldıran.

The website helps thousands of Turkish small- and medium-sized enterprises export their products abroad, he said, adding that some 1.5 million foreign firms in 35 different sectors from 280 different international localities were registered with the website to import Turkish products.

There was a significant upswing in the interest in sectors related to Turkish food during the recent holy month of Ramadan, Yıldıran said.

The official also said a prominent world hotel chain that has a branch in the United Arab Emirates had recently applied to the website to buy Turkish desserts.

The UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia are the countries most in demand of Turkish desserts.

“Some firms order on a piecemeal basis. Some want two tons of desserts, while others only want 20 kilos,” said Yıldıran, adding that he expected the orders to continue after Ramadan, which ended Aug. 18. Meanwhile, Turkey’s chocolate consumption is only one-fourth of that of the United Kingdom, according to the president of the Sugar Products Industrialists Association, Şemsi Kopuz.

While Europeans consume 10 kilos of chocolate per person, Turkey only consumes 2.5 kilos, Kopuz said.

Switzerland leads the way with the highest per capita chocolate consumption at 11 kilos, with Turkey and Russia lagging behind together at three kilograms each in terms of per capita chocolate consumption.