ADIYAMAN BRANCH GENERAL ASSEMBLY

ADIYAMA—5 OCTOBER 2019

Honourable Mayor,

Honourable Rector,

Esteemed Members of the MÜSİAD Board of Directors, Branch Presidents, Provincial Chairman, Esteemed Representatives of the Business, NGO and Political World, Esteemed President and Members of our MÜSİAD Adıyaman Branch, Esteemed Members of the Press,

At the dinner of our Branch General Assembly I respectfully greet you; welcome, you have honoured us with your presence.

Our friends know that we define MÜSİAD’s journey as a “relay race”.

This understanding has played a great part in allowing our journey, which began 30 years ago, to continue for so long and upon such firm foundations.

Today, at our Adıyaman branch, which we opened seven years ago in 2012, we have witnessed a change of flag. I believe that our brother who has come to office will, by contributing to the work of the previous term, carry out successful work for our country. I also thank Şerif Bey, who has handed over his duty, for his services. And I wish him success in his business life as well.

On this occasion, I hope that this change and our General Assembly may be a means to what is good.

Distinguished Guests,

Adıyaman is a geography of such beauty — from agriculture to underground resources — that you can never forget it again once you have witnessed even the rising and the setting of its sun.

The city stands as an important pillar of tourism, particularly on account of Mount Nemrut and the remains of the Commagene Civilization. Yet tourism is a broad field without limits, and Adıyaman is very rich in this respect.

Therefore we must evaluate the tourism of the region within this broad field, see it as an opportunity and increase tourism investments. We must direct the interest of domestic and foreign tourists here to a far greater degree. And the way to do that runs through diversity in tourism.

In terms of increasing the contribution that all our regions make to the national economy, this matter is extremely important.

As MÜSİAD, in order both to put forward concrete projects and to offer solution-oriented proposals, we established the “New Tourism Resources Development Committee”.

The fundamental purpose for which our committee was founded is to change the perception of tourism, which today is unfortunately seen as consisting of sea, sand and sun alone, and to diversify tourism.

We are in a place that possesses serious potential in this sense, above all in cultural and historical tourism, gastro tourism, and nature tourism. This place is tailor-made for entrepreneurs and for our business people seeking a region suited to their investments.

From here I should like to address our business people:

Come, put your investments to work in this region, contribute to the revival of the regional economy.

Today, when we look at the economy of the city, we do not encounter a gratifying picture.

In 2018 Adıyaman ranked 55th on the list of the provinces with the highest exports.

Exports, which reached USD 542 million in 2015, have been in decline in recent years. In 2018 total exports to 56 countries fell by close to %40 compared with the previous year, realizing at the level of USD 76 million. A similar situation is observed in imports as well. Total imports in 2018 declined by %53 compared with the previous year, falling to the level of USD 42 million. We say that it is possible to change this picture; we can say so with ease. Yes, there is a reality before us; but the compass showing how we shall emerge from this process is likewise in our own hands.

We shall be courageous, we shall not be afraid of investment or of diversifying our commercial activities.

We say these things as the president of an NGO present at 311 points, on the basis of the real data we have reached. We are fully acquainted both with the difficulties being experienced and with the existing problems.

As you know, following the exchange rate attacks that took place in August of last year, a significant stagnation was experienced in the markets. As a result of the correct moves of our economic administration, this process was overcome rapidly. Thus the seeds of a wholly new story for the Turkish economy were also sown.

The exchange rate attacks of last August, occurring in the period when the concept of trade wars that we became acquainted with at the beginning of 2018 was being intensely experienced, began at a time when the economy had displayed a successful performance by growing at an annual average rate of %5.7 between 2002 and 2018.

The Turkish economy is today in a process of “rebalancing”, and despite the negative growth expectations at the beginning of the year, it is advancing, God willing, towards positive growth at the year’s end.

At the point we have reached, we see that the current account deficit, which stood at USD 33 billion in the same period of the previous year, has fallen to USD 1.7 billion in the January–July period of this year.

Furthermore, with exports reaching the level of USD 111 billion in the first 9 months of the year, the ratio of exports covering imports has reached %84.

Again in this process, while the policy rate has been brought down to %16.5 with the reduction decisions that have come, the inflation rate has also fallen as far as % 9.25. Our economy lost momentum as investments contracted by %23 on an annual basis in the second quarter of the year. Yet the interest rates, which we believe will come down to lower levels in the period ahead, will be reflected positively in investments. This will halt the contraction, and from the last quarter of the year onwards a process of positive growth will be entered once more. The New Economy Program announced a few days ago by our Minister of Treasury and Finance shows that we shall begin the year 2020 and the period thereafter with positive motivation, and %5 growth. Distinguished Guests,

The world is passing through a transformation; in other words, the age we are in is an important turning point for the future.

One of the results brought about by this transformation in the world is the change of economic balances. Alongside it, we are witnessing a war of power in the world. There are shifts towards a 4-polar world order. In 2023 China and the Asean countries will make up %47 of the world economy, that is, the economy is shifting to the East.

Countries make their future plans accordingly; states take their precautions within this framework.

Türkiye too, a strong and effective player in the international arena, took part in this transformation by changing its own governance paradigms last year.

Of course, the business world could not have been expected to remain indifferent to this change either. As MÜSİAD, in order to facilitate and to accelerate the working of the system, we too launched our own institutional and structural transformation. On this road we set out upon under the name of the “renewal period”, we aim to do justice to a 30-year culture, to a tradition of doing business and to a love of homeland. For we know that MÜSİAD is not merely an NGO or an association of businessmen. MÜSİAD is a part of this country’s 30-year political and economic story — indeed, it is that story itself.

In this period in which Türkiye is preparing to write a new story, our aim, as always, is — with a MÜSİAD in the service of its nation and at the side of its state —

to be the side that writes the plan on the geopolitical map of the new world. And this can come about only through the blending of knowledge and experience with a national consciousness.

What is MÜSİAD? This too is the answer to that question.

MÜSİAD is the host in which knowledge, experience and memory are blended with a national consciousness. Our door is open to everyone who possesses this consciousness.

Digitalization and Commercialization of Knowledge Committee

Defence Industry Partnerships Committee,

Innovation in Competition Planning Committee

Localization and National Production Committee

Resource Development in Multi-Partner Capital Committee

Industrial Zones and Campuses Committee,

Smart city technologies and city economies committee,

Entrepreneurship and branding committee,

Our Academia–Industry–Public Cooperation Committees are today the interlocutors in the planning of the future of industry.

With a MÜSİAD that we have redesigned in the form of project-based and output-oriented working groups, we have moved to a new understanding that advances far more rapidly and develops projects directed at the target.

The Committees I listed above were only a few examples of the fields of work that have been opened. We have set out on the road for the New Türkiye with 41 Committees that encompass every sector in our country and that are shaped as tactical road maps for each sector. I should like to state once more here that we take pride in this.

And our aim is clear in our motto: in good days and in bad, together for all eternity.

In the New World there is now a new Türkiye. The new Türkiye has a new model of governance. This model places responsibilities upon us as well. All of us — from professional unions to chambers, from boards to companies — must be active in a wholesale process of institutional change.

Knowledge is power. Yet in a world in which knowledge updates itself at every moment, real power lies in being the side that gives it direction, not the side that follows it. This is what MÜSİAD is.

It befits the ummah of the exalted Prophet, who declared that he whose two days are equal is not one of us, to work, to produce and to stand firmly upright with trust in God in the face of every threat. This is what befits us.

We are sustaining this change, which we have carried out within our own structure and which we call Renewal, by remaining faithful to our fundamental values and to the purposes of our foundation, to which we have been attached for 30 years.

Renewal was begun in order to make MÜSİAD’s field of influence and power more effective and more productive.

This was a step we had to take in the direction of the interests of our homeland and of our state as we advance on the road to a Strong Türkiye. As you know, MÜSİAD is a business and capital platform that has grown by taking our country’s ancient tradition of trade as its foundation.

MÜSİAD, which has taken on a dynamic structure in the new period, aims to produce more projects and to carry out a rigorous follow-up process so that these projects may become reality.

Partnership is a business model that prevents our business person from having to place himself under the burden of interest in order to shoulder an investment alone — a model that also has its place in our tradition of trade.

In Adıyaman we see a successful example of this business model.

ADIMER, founded in 2013 by 32 MÜSİAD members who came together, markets to the world the marble it processes here.

This example alone is in fact a proof of how well judged MÜSİAD’s proposals and projects are.

In the new period too we shall continue, by keeping our finger on the pulse of the field, to process and to produce all the data we have gathered in the direction of the interests of our country, and above all of our members.

Distinguished Guests,

As I complete my words, I wish that the change of office that has taken place at our branch may be auspicious for the Adıyaman business world and for our country. I thank our new president who will take over the office, Şerif Bey who is handing it over, my presidents of previous terms and everyone who contributed to the organization, and I greet you all with respect and with affection. May God protect you.

Abdurrahman Kaan

President of MÜSİAD