107th General Administrative Board Meeting - 22 September 2023

Esteemed members of our MÜSİAD, valued representatives of our business world,

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen,

I greet you all with respect, affection and reverence.

Welcome to the 107th General Administrative Board Meeting of MÜSİAD; you have brought joy with you…

Distinguished guests, esteemed MÜSİAD Family,

Anatolia is the cradle of civilizations. These lands are the center of labour, tolerance, love and sharing. As you know, the foundations of our MÜSİAD were laid exactly 33 years ago with the abundance of these lands, with the power of sharing and labour, and with the faith, determination and resolve of 12 young business people.

MÜSİAD, whose name has become almost synonymous with the sweat of the brow, set out in 1990 with the goal of opening the strength of Anatolia to the world and strengthening local development. From that day to this, it has continued its march for the cause of civilization.

As MÜSİAD, for 33 years under the roof of MÜSİAD we have carried out many beneficial works both for our country and for our people. While carrying the strength we drew from Anatolia to all four corners of the world, we have never compromised our ideals or our essence.

As in that famous analogy of Mevlana; as MÜSİAD we are like the legs of a compass: while one leg is firmly attached to the soil of Anatolia, the other is in all four corners of the world, continuing on its way at all times with a vision of a business world rising on the foundation of virtue, high morality and trust.

In this important cause of civilization that it pursues, MÜSİAD has stood beside the one who is in the right, the one who labours and the one who strives. Today, God willing, we will continue to carry this cause of civilization, which has reached all four corners of Anatolia and indeed of the world, to even greater heights.

Dear friends,

For us, connection begins in the heart… What binds people to one another are ideas, feelings and beliefs. MÜSİAD too has been built first and foremost upon this principle. That is, it is a civil society organization that works on the principle of volunteering.

Together with our members who joined us by grasping the meaning of the principles and aims we have mentioned and by believing that MÜSİAD represents these values, we have left behind 33 full years. God willing, we will continue on our way for many more years.

On this occasion, from our founding president to the newest member to join the MÜSİAD Family, I thank everyone who has supported us and laboured on this journey, and I pray for the mercy of God Almighty upon those who have passed away.

Most esteemed MÜSİAD Family,

Since 1990, we have been working hard with the goal of displaying, through our activities and events, a performance above that of the previous year each and every year.

The MÜSİAD spirit is such a spirit that while each new member comes with abundance and blessing, every new branch and contact point we open carries us one step further forward in the cause of civilization. With every new work and activity we undertake, the roads ahead of us open ever wider... And as we walk our path with the principles of trade that our religion commands, we never depart from the understanding of the Market of Medina.

With our International Business Forums, our MÜSİAD Visionary meetings, our fairs, the awards we present, the sectoral meetings we hold and the international business summits and organizations we arrange, we strive to sustain our understanding of the Market of Medina and our cause of civilization.

We carry this spirit and this consciousness to the whole world through our commercial diplomacy activities, and to our aggrieved, migrant and oppressed brothers and sisters through our humanitarian diplomacy work.

Esteemed members of MÜSİAD,

As business people and members of the trade, alongside lawful earnings we are filled with the effort and the passion to carry our country economically to greater heights.

Therefore, what falls to us is to work for the development of our country; to earn legitimately through Islamic means without violating anyone’s rights; to use the surplus of our earnings for the public benefit, to produce more, to invest and thereby to provide employment.

Thanks be to God, as MÜSİAD we have to date carried out many fine works in terms of providing employment and increasing investment.

By launching the Anatolian Production and Investment Movement, we declared 2023 the “Year of Investment” in line with the “Centenary” targets of our country. In this framework we established the “MÜSİAD Trade Office” and “MÜSİAD Invest”. We joined our forces to create global and large brands and established the Venture Capital Investment Fund.

By taking part regularly in the meetings of the Coordination Council for the Improvement of the Investment Environment, we shared the views of our MÜSİAD on the economy with our government, and we continue to share them.

One of the most important ways of contributing to the investment environment is commercial diplomacy work. As MÜSİAD we attach great importance to commercial diplomacy activities and, in this scope, while increasing our business trips with each passing day, we are also adding new ones to the number of our international branches and representative offices. In this way, we have largely realized our target of establishing MÜSİAD offices in all of the G20 countries. In addition, with the workshops and training activities we will launch in the new term, we aim to carry this accumulated experience to new generations.

We are focusing more and more each day on technology and digitalization, the sine qua non of investment and value-added production, and we are striving to increase our investments in these fields.

Moreover, we attach great importance to the European Green Deal and to climate change for the sake of our future and the future of our children, and we carry out work to inform our members on these subjects.

In addition, as MÜSİAD we have for years also been producing intellectual work in the field of economics. With our SAMEKS index, which we have published with great care for 10 years, with our sectoral research reports, our academic publications and our Çerçeve Magazine, which we have published for years, we put forward important ideas offering various recommendations to decision-makers in the field of economics.

Esteemed MÜSİAD Family,

Over the course of 33 years, without compromising our principles, we have both increased our activities and expanded our organization. As of today, thanks be to God, we are the most widely organized civil society organization of Türkiye.

Today MÜSİAD continues its successful work with great determination at its 84 points at home with 13 thousand members. In addition, we serve our members in a total of 81 countries from the east to the west of the world from our contact offices spread across exactly 169 points with a global network. God willing, we will carry this number even higher in the periods ahead.

MÜSİAD is the result of a return to the essence and of the desire to seek one’s roots. The founding of MÜSİAD is the sprouting and taking root of the understanding of the Market of Medina in these lands.

Under the roof of MÜSİAD, we have carried out many beneficial works both for our country and for our people. While carrying the strength we drew from Anatolia to all four corners of the world, we have never compromised our ideals or our essence.

I pray to God Almighty that the leaven of wisdom which the people of the heart instilled in Anatolia may always be, from now on as it has been until today, a means of our unity and our well-being.

We will work together, we will develop together and we will all win together.

Because MÜSİAD means keeping the interest of the country and the people in the foreground at all times and under all conditions.

MÜSİAD means not departing from the pleasure of God and carrying the sensitivity of the Market of Medina into today’s business world.

MÜSİAD means working and struggling so that Türkiye, as a strong country, may take the place it ought to occupy in the world arena.

Because MÜSİAD means being one, being united and being together.

I greet with respect and reverence all business people who contribute to our MÜSİAD with their efforts, their labour and the sweat of their brow, and who provide added value to the economy of our country…

May God protect you.

Mahmut Asmalı

President of MÜSİAD