MÜSİAD 28TH ORDINARY GENERAL ASSEMBLY FAREWELL SPEECH
09 May 2025-Haliç Congress Center
My Most Esteemed Mr. President,
Distinguished Speaker of our Gazi Assembly,
Honourable Ministers,
Esteemed members of parliament,
Distinguished Guests,
Dear MÜSİAD Family, esteemed representatives of our press, ladies and gentlemen…
As I begin my remarks, I greet you all with my most heartfelt feelings, with respect and with reverence.
Welcome, one and all, to the 28th Ordinary General Assembly programme of our MÜSİAD; you have honoured us with your presence.
Today, here, we are not merely holding a general assembly; we are at the same time celebrating the blessed 35-year march of our MÜSİAD.We are living the excitement of handing this trust over to new hands, with brand-new hopes.
I express my gratitude, on behalf of the MÜSİAD community, to our President Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who honoured us by gracing our General Assembly.
Mr. President, Distinguished Guests,
We set out on this road saying, “Dreams walk into reality”… This first step, taken in 1990 with only 12 idealistic young entrepreneurs under the goal of ‘’’High Morality,High Technology, has today turned into a waving Seljuk star, with 83 branches at home and with branch and contact points at 100 different locations in 85 countries abroad, and with more than 14 thousand members.
In those days “capital” was the monopoly of only a certain circle. In defiance of those who asked, “Can global trade come out of Anatolia?”, today we are the ones discussing on which continent of the world and with whom a business partnership can be established.
At our founding, in the pithy phrase of Malcolm X, “Sincerity was our only capital.” Thirty-five years on as well, praise be to God, ’‘Our sincerity is still our greatest capital.’’
With this sincerity and effort, today we are celebrating our 35th year. Even though the poet Cahit Sıtkı Tarancı said, “Age thirty-five. That makes half the road”, MÜSİAD is still at the beginning of the road, and God willing it will continue to serve this country, this nation, this ummah and humanity for many more 35 years…
At the point we have reached today MÜSİAD is not only a community of business people, but at the same time the name of a moral stance, of a national development mobilization, of a movement of conscience. We believe that a virtuous society will be built with a virtuous community of merchants.
We came to love the word “profit” when it joined with “perseverance, self-sacrifice and loyalty”; we found it more meaningful and more valuable then.
Mr. President,
This blessed duty, which we took over 3 years and 8 months ago with the exalted participation of Your Excellency, we have striven to carry until this moment of handover with a loyalty befitting the spirit of MÜSİAD. Now, with your kind permission, I would like to present briefly the work we have carried out:
🔹 With the Anatolian Economic Diplomacy initiative,
from Bursa to Trabzon, from Niğde to Gaziantep, we took foreign ambassadors to the production centres of Anatolia and brought them together with our industrialists.
🔹 In the very midst of the pandemic, we launched the Anatolian Production and Investment Movement with a target of 15 billion dollars in 40 provinces.
🔹 Led by our Visionary meetings themed “Take Notice” and “The Power of WE”, through the seminars, panels and conferences we held with broad participation, we drew new visions for all entrepreneurs, whether MÜSİAD members or not.
🔹 Our esteemed Mr. President, we held our MÜSİAD EXPO fairs, which you too honoured by gracing them, with intense participation.
🔹 With our MÜSİAD Industry and Technology Summits, we came together with our industrialists , discussed their problems , and formed sets of solutions
🔹 With our Sectoral Summits and our Supplier
Meetings, we created new business opportunities for our members.
🔹 With our Sectoral Reports and our publications, we presented our solution proposals to our business world and to the public.
🔹 With our Power of Türkiye Award ceremonies, which you too honoured by gracing them, we rewarded those who add strength to the strength of our Türkiye.
🔹 With our MÜSİAD Altınçark International Short Film
Festival, for the first time we brought the cinema community together with MÜSİAD member businessmen.
🔹 Under the roof of Young MÜSİAD we raised entrepreneurs who “know both their origin and their age”. With the International Young Businessmen Congress we brought together the youth organizations of the world.
🔹 With MÜSİAD Women, we broke the dilemma of “either work or family”. We brought forward successful role models able to say “both family and work”. With our International Women's Awareness Summits and with our book 23 Women in the Century of Türkiye, we left lasting traces.
🔹 In order to support institutional investment and our young entrepreneurs, we brought the Müstakil Venture Capital Investment Fund to life.
🔹 In our international activities, we opened up to dozens of countries, from Azerbaijan to Saudi Arabia, from the USA to Australia, from the Balkans to Latin America. We raised the number of our branches and representative offices in the world's most important cities to 100. Thanks to our IBF programmes, we encouraged commercial integration among Muslim countries.
🔹 Nor did we hold back in social responsibility.
With the Qard al-Hasan Fund we encouraged solidarity within, and with the Zimem Ledgers mutual aid without. We established the MÜSİAD village in the Idlib region of Syria, and together with our Red Crescent we carried the international conscience to Gaza with the Ships of Goodness.
🔹 In the 6 February earthquakes, recorded as the Disaster of the Century,
we worked in coordination together with all the institutions of our state and with our civil society organizations. Reaching the region from the very first day, we brought many important projects to life, from soup kitchens and container cities to health centres.
Not content with this, we gave scholarships to our earthquake-stricken students and provided Qard al-Hasan loans to our earthquake-stricken businessmen. All this work was done not by me but by us, all of us together. We did it together with our board member friends who turned their nights into days, with all our presidents at home and abroad, and with our more than 14 thousand members. I am grateful to every one of my brothers who trusted us, who walked the road with us and who worked day and night for this cause. I thank each one of you from the heart; how good it is that you exist. (APPLAUSE)
Mr. President, Distinguished Guests,
Türkiye is no longer merely a regional power; it is an actor that determines the direction of the global system.
And in the very midst of this change, we as MÜSİAD are both the carrier and the builder of the vision of the Century of Türkiye. This vision contains within it not only economic growth but at the same time a claim to civilization woven with morality, justice, production, technology and diplomacy. In the armed UAV and UAV revolution in the defence industry, in our domestic electric automobile taking to the roads, in the take-off of our national combat aircraft KAAN, from our satellite technologies to our software exports, in many fields there is the sweat, the signature and the prayer of MÜSİAD members.
Our motto today is clear:
“Insistence on domestic production, determination in manufacturing… We say that the best boycott is to produce.”
Mr. President, Distinguished Guests,
The Turkish economy, with the correct and rational policies implemented over the past 23 years and with the determined stance of the political will, has left a serious threshold behind and passed into a new stage. In economy and trade, Türkiye has left a great obstacle behind by moving from the quality of being the backyard of foreign companies into the league of countries that have achieved domestic and national production.
AND it is walking with determination towards the goal of becoming one of the world's top 10 developed economies.
Türkiye, which in 2002 made exports of only 35 billion dollars, has today broken a historic record with 262 billion dollars, and our national income per capita has risen above 15 thousand dollars.
Our defence industry has become an exporting sector.
TOGG is on the roads, KAAN and AKINCI are in the skies. Our Altay tank and our ship Anadolu are on duty. In short, Türkiye's last 23 years passed full of successes, despite global crises, regional problems and obstructions such as the Gezi uprising and the 15 July Treacherous Coup Attempt.
Alongside all of this, of course, there are matters we must solve in the economy.
As the Turkish business world, we desire that the welfare level of our country and of our people be raised still higher. We have many problems that we must solve, led by high inflation and high financing costs, which arose because of the global developments brought about by the pandemic and because of internal factors.
Of course, we must increase the climate of confidence, accelerate the reforms and find the remedies for raising productivity.
We need to do all of this as soon as possible in order to strengthen our economy still further.
Mr. President, under your leadership a very strong economic foundation has been laid in 23 years. As the business world, we will not allow any crisis to shake this foundation.
Let us not forget this:
We stood upright even in the hardest years of this country. The 2001 crisis, the 2008 global financial crisis, the Gezi uprising, the 15 July treacherous coup attempt, the pandemic, the earthquakes, geopolitical tensions.
Each of them was a great test. And each time we continued on our way with a more resilient, more domestic, more strategic production model.
Now we are in a period in which the whole business world must stand shoulder to shoulder. The business world needs to leave politics to the politicians and to focus on investment, R&D, producing more, branding, digital transformation, productivity and exports. Instead of designing politics, our business organizations should design their factories, their export markets and their new investments. We, as the MÜSİAD community, have always adopted a unifying, solution-proposing, just and constructive understanding.
We believed that the business world should be the side that “produces value”; we focused on being “producers”, not “polarizers”. Whatever our political views may be, all of us as a society — Kurd and Turk, Alevi and Sunni, women and men, young and old — must join hands for our common future.
For this reason we see the ideal of a “Türkiye Free of Terror” not only as a matter of security but also as a matter of economic sustainability.
Mr. President, as you too have expressed many times, there is no other Türkiye for any of us. There is no other homeland, no other state, no other future. We must never let it slip our minds that we cannot grow by dividing. We cannot grow strong by fragmenting; we cannot root brotherhood by fanning enmity. We cannot advance our democracy by clinging to obsessions.
The direction in which the world is heading shows that we must bind ourselves ever more tightly to one another by bringing to the fore not our differences but what we hold in common.
That is why we have held fast to that wise command of the Surah al-Anfal:
’’Obey God and His Messenger. And do not dispute with one another, lest you lose heart and your strength depart.” Mr. President, have no doubt whatsoever:
It is determination, not fear, that rules the wind of this organization.(APPLAUSE)
Esteemed Guests,
Now we come to the most important moment: the handover of the watch…
This duty, which we took over on 11 September 2021, we hand over today, on 9 May, the founding day of our MÜSİAD, with the same consciousness of responsibility and with peace of heart.
This is not a separation but a change of flag; not an end, but a renewal for the continuation of goodness.
I feel great pride in handing this sacred trust over to my brother Mr. Burhan Özdemir.
I believe wholeheartedly that when his youthful dyna-mism combines with our deep-rooted experience, and his visionary approach with our geography of the heart, far greater stories will be written.
On this occasion;
🌿 To our Long-standing Presidents who have lent their shoulders to this cause since the day it was founded,
🌿 To our founding members who have passed on to eternity, to our former board members, to the members of our organization, 🌿 To my board member friends who turned their nights into days, to all our presidents at home and abroad,
🌿 To our bright young brothers and sisters in Young MÜSİAD, to our MÜSİAD Women organization,
🌿 To all my brothers and sisters serving on our commissions and on our sector boards and to the devoted staff of our administrative team, I offer my thanks one by one; I would like to express that I feel heartfelt gratitude to each of them.
And, with your permission, I have a special word of thanks. Before you, I offer my most sincere thanks to my dear wife Mrs. Zeliha and to my whole family, who gave me every kind of support throughout my term of office, and to my esteemed business partner Mr. Hüseyin Dinçel.
And of course;
To our President Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who follows every step of MÜSİAD, who opens horizons for its every struggle and who gives us strength by his presence, I express my gratitude on my own behalf and on behalf of my organization.
Our road is long; may our companionship be everlasting…
To our Lord, who shortens our long road,
who lightens the burden we carry,
who opens the doors leading to hope, praise be. In this blessed organization in which we have walked shoulder to shoulder for 35 years;
Every new factory is not merely a production facility, it is a prayer. Every door of employment that opens is not merely a job, it is a hope. Every export is not merely foreign currency, it is a campaign of vision and loyalty. Today we are handing over a trust here, but our cause continues.
Let our name and fame not be known, it does not matter…
“Our labours will not be lost,for our Lord is the One who knows all things. He is sufficient for us.”
May my Lord make our unity everlasting, our brotherhood enduring, and our sincerity our capital.
With these feelings, I thank from the heart our esteemed President, who honoured us by gracing our General Assembly, our Speaker
of the Assembly,our esteemed Ministers, our Members of Parliament, our valued guests, our sponsors, our members of the press And our dear MÜSİAD Family,
I greet you all once again with respect and with reverence, and I entrust you to God.