Honourable Vice President,

My Esteemed Friends,

I greet you all wholeheartedly with the peace of God.

We have gathered here today not merely to hold a meeting, but to express once again and with strength the national will beating in the heart of this country, its conscience and its faith in a shared future. It is vivid in all our memories: on February 28 we paid a price against the tutelage order that targeted our faith. On the night of July 15, our nation stood before the tanks with its bare hands, and the next day opened its workplaces and kept the wheels turning. This memory teaches us the following: if there is national will, there is a future.

Honourable Vice President,

Today the world order is being rebuilt. Balances of power are changing and our region is going through great birth pangs. In the middle of this turbulence, Türkiye continues to be the voice of peace, justice and mercy. As MÜSİAD, we are a community that carries the economic, commercial and social dimensions of this vision into the field.

One of the most concrete steps of this vision was taking up the “Terror-Free Türkiye” project, a project of our state. On 12 June 2025, for the first time in MÜSİAD's history, we held the presidents' meeting in Diyarbakır, outside the head office. 125 of our branch presidents from Türkiye and from abroad attended the meeting. In this sense, as MÜSİAD we took the lead in this field and, for the first time, established the Terror-Free Türkiye Commissions so that terrorism would be addressed not only as a security matter but also along the axis of the economy, social peace and the law of brotherhood.

We brought 18 of our branch presidents, opinion leaders, academics and journalists together around the same table. We prepared a multidimensional report. In this way we gave the following message: terrorism is ended not only with weapons in the mountains, but through the struggle against unemployment, economic deprivation and social division. We proudly bear the responsibility of being the association that carried out the first study in this field. Esteemed Attendees,

Our calculations show that the cost of terrorism is not only the security budget. Had there been no terrorism, Türkiye's national income could have been at least one trillion dollars higher. The loss is not only in figures; it is in our bonds of brotherhood, in the hopes of our young people and in the development opportunities of our regions. That is precisely why “a terror-free Türkiye” is a matter not only of security, but also of prosperity and of the future.

This understanding also guides our projects.

  • With our Family-Friendly Workplace Project, more than a thousand of our companies support their employees in getting married and in having children.
  • With our Vocational Employment Project, we guarantee jobs for five thousand of our young people. Because we know that we cannot strengthen society without strengthening the family. We cannot build Türkiye's future without bringing young people into production.

Honourable Vice President,

I would also like to touch upon another wound of conscience: Gaza.

Today the tragedy that most deeply wounds the conscience of humanity is being experienced in Gaza. Women, children, the elderly; innocent civilians whose homes are demolished over their heads are being killed before the eyes of the world. Hospitals are being bombed, places of worship are being levelled to the ground. Millions of people denied access to water, electricity and food are struggling for life in the world's largest open-air prison.

In the face of this picture, it is not possible for civil society to remain silent. We believe that lending an ear to the cry of the oppressed in Gaza is not merely a humanitarian duty; it is at the same time a test of justice and conscience. When Türkiye's foreign policy, which stands by the oppressed, is combined with the humanitarian efforts of our business world and our civil society organizations in the field, it can turn into a concrete model of solidarity that goes beyond condemnation. On this matter too we have taken a concrete step and, in cooperation with the Turkish Red Crescent, launched a new food aid campaign among our members, in addition to the support we had previously provided to Gaza.

My Esteemed Friends

The Century of Türkiye vision offers us great goals. But in order to realize these goals, the state, the business world and civil society must stand shoulder to shoulder. Our motto is clear: national will, national economy, national strength.

Today, before you, I declare once again: as MÜSİAD, we are ready to take on every responsibility that falls to us for a Türkiye that grows through production, that rises with its youth and that ascends with its justice and its conscience.

Honourable Vice President,

Esteemed Friends,

Proceeding from here, I would like to make three strong calls to our civil society community: First: establish collaborations. Let our NGOs working in similar fields see one another not as rivals but as stakeholders. Because scattered activities carried out in the same field both weaken our strength and lead to a waste of resources. Whereas when we combine our strengths, our networks and our means, we create a multiplier effect. When we act together, our voice is louder and our impact is greater.

Second: share your results. Let us use common metrics in aid, employment, education and family support. Let us provide transparency to the public through regular reports. This both increases the trust of our nation and enables us to see in which field we are doing too much and in which field we are falling short. In this way we waste neither effort nor resources.

Third: be the pioneer of consultation. Let us turn the information and the experience we gather from the field into concrete and measurable policy proposals. Let us share these proposals with decision-makers in regular consultation mechanisms. In this way the policies of the state are nourished from the field, resources are directed to the right areas, and wrong spending is prevented.

My esteemed friends,

If we implement these three steps, civil society becomes the address not only of good intentions but also of effectiveness and efficiency. And we all know that we are not one another's rivals. We are stakeholders of the same cause, the same nation and the same goal.

As I conclude my words, I would like to state once again: there is no stability without national will, no prosperity without justice, and no future without the family. As MÜSİAD, we work with this conviction; we struggle for a future that does not waste resources, that does not squander effort and that prioritizes partnership over rivalry.

I greet you all with respect and affection.