Turkish State Minister Kursad Tuzmen said Wednesday Turkey targeted a 125 billion U.S. dollars exports for the year of 2008, the semi-official Anatolia news agency reported.

Turkish exports were projected at 100 billion exports for 2007 and it was six billion U.S. dollars higher than this target, Tuzmen told a meeting of Turkish Exporters' Assembly (TIM) in Istanbul, adding that "2008 will be a year where business will overtake politics".

"Turkey's monthly export figures are well over the annual export figures of many European Union countries, and we are moving ahead with decisive steps toward our exports target for 2023, which is 500 billion U.S. dollars," Tuzmen said.

Turkish exports in 2007 increased by 23.49 percent compared to 2006 and reached 105.9 billion U.S. dollars, according to Anatolia.

Top 20 countries that received most of Turkish exports were Germany, Britain, Italy, France, Russia, Spain, the United States,Romania, the Netherlands, UAE, Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, Belgium, Israel, Ukraine, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Algeria.