12TH HATAY HUMAN RESOURCES AND EMPLOYMENT FAIR
THE TÜRKİYE ECONOMY AND EMPLOYMENT
İskenderun Technical University Main Campus
3 December 2019
Honourable District Governor of İskenderun,
Honourable Mayor of İskenderun, Esteemed Rectors,
Distinguished Representatives of the Business World, Civil Society Organizations and Academia,
Distinguished Representatives of Our Local and National Press,
Dear Young People,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Before I begin my remarks, I pray for God’s mercy upon our soldier Harun Çınar, who was martyred in Tel-Abyad while securing the safety of our country and our nation; may our nation’s grief be eased.
Today, 3 December, is the World Day of Persons with Disabilities; when we are together, when we join hands, there is no obstacle we cannot overcome. On this occasion, saying that “the greatest obstacle is lovelessness”, I wish for love and awareness to grow on 3 December, the World Day of Persons with Disabilities.
Esteemed Guests,
I would like to express the pleasure I feel at being present at this organization, which brings us together here under the overarching theme of the Türkiye economy and employment, and I greet you with respect and affection.
Distinguished Guests,
Employment — that is, the labour force, that is, an educated and productive human resource open to production. When it comes to the human being, we prefer to use the concept of “value” rather than “resource”. Within MÜSİAD it is the same; the name of the department is human values.
For the human being is a value. He is a trust from God. To cultivate this trust in the best possible way is one of the most fundamental duties incumbent first upon the human being himself and then, at every stage, upon the building blocks of society.
For this reason, if we are speaking of the economy and employment, we must go down to the very core of the matter and concentrate our search for solutions there. That is, education.
Look, here, under the roof of a home of education and instruction, we are in fact seeing minds that are being cultivated stage by stage like a precious stone; in a sense, we are seeing the tomorrows of our country’s economy and social structure.
And the master hands that cultivate these minds are, of course, our teachers.
On this occasion, in the person of our esteemed Rector, I would like to greet with reverence all our teachers who carry out this sacred duty both here and on every soil of my homeland, under every condition, without tiring or faltering. I would also like to take this opportunity to congratulate you on the recent Teachers’ Day.
May God honour you in both worlds. For the sake of the attribute of the learned, may He always make you our guides.
With your permission, I would like to begin my remarks with a story;
As the story goes:
For three consecutive nights, someone he did not know entered the dreams of Pythagoras, one of the students of the Prophet Solomon.
The man in the dream described to Pythagoras the shore of a sea and insisted a great deal that he go there. According to the man, on that shore a knowledge awaited Pythagoras that no one had known until that day but that would be the key to every difficulty.
This knowledge would be God’s gift to him. In the days that followed, Pythagoras found the shore mentioned in the dream and waited there.
But he saw that there was no one to teach him this knowledge. With the patience and persistence of a philosopher he began to go there every day, but this time what he sought was not a person but a clue that would give him this knowledge.
For he knew that if the Almighty Creator is to bestow a knowledge upon someone, He conceals it in clues that everyone has looked at many times without seeing.
And yet everything is plainly in the open.
It is only that we learn at the time and in the measure that He permits.
For an eye that knows how to look and a mind that finds its answer in the oneness of God, everything is plainly in the open. The Creator has laid out a universe filled with infinite discovery at the service of our eyes and our perceptions. What we draw from it depends on how we look. Education teaches us how we should look. It accustoms our minds to patience, to waiting, to experience and to determination.
Let us return to our story;
Pythagoras finally finds the clue. On the shore, several ironsmiths are hammering iron one after another, with pauses of a second in between.
Pythagoras listens to these sounds patiently. This opens for him the doors of an entirely different concept: rhythm. From that moment on, Pythagoras begins to hear in all the sounds of nature the timbre of pause, continuity and strike.
The sound of the wave on the shore, the stones striking momentarily and continuously, the wind, the calls of birds, the rain beginning to fall…
All of them, within a certain range of sound and at different levels of tone, seem to complete the same whole.
The clue that lay plainly before everyone’s eyes, heard countless times until that day yet whose whole no one had grasped, is entrusted to Pythagoras.
That persistent philosopher has discovered harmony. In the period that follows he begins to add a mathematical value and measure to these sounds. Thus melody develops.
Other scholars follow him and instruments that imitate sounds are born. Notes, scales, intervals, rhythmic patterns, measures, frets, modes. In a word: music.
Distinguished Guests,
Had Pythagoras not been patient with the discipline of learning he received from his teacher;
Had his educated mind not nourished his sense of attention to detail;
Had education not developed his perspectives,
Had Pythagoras not believed in experience and been persistent and resolute;
And had he of course not allowed his own talents to be worked like embroidery in careful hands and to shine in a field suited to those talents, today, let alone hearing the healing power of music, we might not even have been able to make sense of the sounds in nature.
Education is precisely such a key. Every piece of knowledge that lies plainly in the open and has been entrusted to us by God can only be transformed into qualified work by educated minds.
Let us speak of the economy, but the economy is the management of scarce resources. And as resources it addresses not only natural resources but, above all, the human being. Because the human being, who is a value, is in fact the driving force of economies.
Because it is the human mind and human labour that bring about change, that carry out production, and that turn an idea into a product.
Last week, within the scope of Vizyone 19, we addressed the new world order awaiting us under the theme of the Digital Future. Our guests, among the world’s most prominent strategists and digital transformation experts, informed us about the new world system.
But a common statement emerged from all of them: “Artificial intelligence or smart systems — whatever the name may be — in the future that awaits us the most important asset is once again the human mind and human labour that will manage these systems”.
Still and insistently, the most important economic asset of the world of the future is the human being.
In the opening speech I made the following remark. I see no harm in repeating it here as well: like the service that intelligence renders to reason, digital evolution today manages and accelerates the change in our socio-political and economic parameters and paradigms.
However, in certain respects it can also cause irreversible damage.
Because it renders us unable to speak of the human being and of the continuation of humanity. As a Turkish writer said: humanity is dying in our arms.
Therefore, however great the transformation that has arrived at our door, what will keep us standing is the value we give to the human being and the educational processes that will increase that value.
Esteemed Guests,
Today we see that even economic principles are changing in the world.
Capitalism is changing its definition and even its method.
We are witnessing exceedingly harsh trade wars. Balances are shifting in the true sense.
I say it at every opportunity; we aspire to be the ones who design, not the ones who adapt to the design.
We are about to cross a new frontier line. An entirely new world is taking shape.
The countries the world recognized yesterday as absolute powers are today about to leave their turn on the stage to countries such as China and India, which were not in the reckoning at all thirty years ago.
Today, even when we consider only the Belt and Road Project, we see major clues as to what kind of vision of the world we will face in the future.
The new economic system is turning towards Asia — and not even secretly, but openly.
The new commercial relations that we define as trade wars are largely governed by the whole set of relations we call “trade diplomacy”.
While states command the major steps already taken, the applicability of state policies on the ground is strengthened by the efforts of civil society organizations.
The elements of national power are being redefined.
To the concept of the border are now added the concepts of border security and building safe zones
Old Europe is coming to the conclusion that the element threatening its own internal integrity is itself.
Doors are closing, because migration is becoming both a threat and a bargaining chip.
In terms of production and demand, protectionist policies are coming into play against the power of China and Asia.
These policies and the constantly recurring elections are strengthening the nationalist current in the world.
The system that uses money as a commodity has begun to work on its own alternative value chains in order to be rid of money. Pluralism is being discussed anew
The change in economic behaviour is moving to shape social structures into inward-looking societies.
Now that cultural penetration has lost its role of opening productive markets for modern capitalism, there is discussion of how the concepts of localization and domestication will be used both in investment and in creating city brands.
In short, the world is now an entirely different place, distinguished guests.
We must read this difference, this great transformation, correctly.
Along with all this change, the professions that will come to the fore in the future and that will shape the future are of course changing as well.
This change will not emerge in the same way in every country and every society.
Because the cultural and social codes of every society directly affect its industry, its understanding of production and its tradition, and its strategic sectors.
Therefore, in the process of transformation, the needs analysis must also be made accurately. This correct analysis will benefit us at the point of sustainability.
Esteemed Guests,
As business people and industrialists, we emphasize the importance of education and vocational training at every opportunity.
But we must also draw this distinction well; according to which parameters will we provide vocational education and training?
As a country, we need to plan well where we want to position ourselves in the future. The answer to this question will be determined by the outcome of this planning.
Planning with a well-drawn road map and guiding our young people accordingly are the most important steps towards walking strongly into the future.
For some time now, the Türkiye economy has begun to shake off the effects of the global shocks it has suffered and to enter a process of rebalancing.
Regaining the growth trend, of course, depends on carrying out production and trade planning in the best possible way.
What determines the monetary power of countries is their production power and capacity.
Look, yesterday TÜİK announced the third-quarter GDP and growth figures. In parallel with market expectations, we moved into a growth band of % 0.9.
However, this rate is not sufficient for us to complete the year with a growth series.
When we look at the details of the figures, we see a lack of investment and stagnation in the industrial sector.
Of course, when compared with the last two quarters, and even when considered as a response to last year’s shocks, these figures are quite promising.
But they are not sufficient. Because a strong economy is possible only through the healthy cycle of a continuous and productive system of production and trade.
One of the matters we have stated repeatedly as MÜSİAD is the strong position in which the contributions we make to our national capital stock will place us as a national economic power in the world’s arena of competition.
And our national capital stock depends on a strong domestic industry and a localized investment system.
To the extent that we reduce our need for foreign investment and structure our own production system correctly, we can be resilient in the face of economic shocks in the world.
In recent weeks, experts from the OECD came to our institution. They asked how the Türkiye economy could remain standing in this way despite such great shocks. Our experts and the chairman of our relevant committee spoke to them of the sui generis structure of the Türkiye economy.
The OECD experts, who knew this young economy of high torque only from a distance and through distortion and games of negative perception, were astonished as they listened to its own internal dynamics.
From our accounting system to the culture of mutual assistance in our social dynamics; from how the phenomenon of migration works to Türkiye’s regional economic structuring, which consists of sub-economic models and functions like fragmented yet complementary components — they came and learned many things on the spot.
They took note of the projections and proposals regarding how and in what way the trillions of lira of wealth that does not flow into the economic structure but lies idle in the banking system could be transferred into the economic system.
They were virtually shocked, saying, “We did not know that these matters were like this. In that case you truly do have a strong economic infrastructure”.
They were amazed when they heard of our models based on partnership rather than debt. They said, “This is a set of solutions rarely encountered anywhere in the world”.
And yet, when one looks from afar, or approaches with prejudice alone without knowing where to look, how different matters appear, is it not so?
And yet, for an eye that knows how to look, everything is plainly in the open. It is enough for everyone to be as patient as Pythagoras, as respectful towards correct information and as open to learning. Is that not so, esteemed guests?
But if we are pricking someone else with a needle here, we must save the sackneedle for ourselves.
It seems that we too have not yet become so skilled at explaining ourselves, at demonstrating our potential and at playing the game by its rules.
And at this point we arrive at the same place once again: education and the presence of an educated, qualified labour force.
Because if we do not break the logic of “let them go through some educational process, let them study whatever they like as long as they finish university” and manage the process correctly, we will struggle to prevent the increase in the number of the “educated unemployed”.
Because if we cannot make correct education and employment planning in line with our economic targets, then, let alone the professions of the future, we may become unable even to speak of the future of our professions and therefore unable to explain ourselves and our potential correctly to the world.
We need to plan well our general visions, such as “which piece of the global puzzle does Türkiye want to correspond to in the future”.
Education and vocational training are of course very important, but according to what — that is, according to which parameters — will we carry this out?
Where will we position ourselves so that we may guide our generations accordingly in terms of professional fields?
Finally, there is one more matter: do we know our young people, their talents, and the fields to which the coming generation is more inclined?
In other words, do we have a “talent management” assessment study?. All these questions are questions we must answer at the very beginning of the road. Otherwise, if we do not define our fundamental paradigms correctly, we will again go round and round in a vicious circle.
Just as with the enormous increase in graduates of the “business administration department or faculty”, which we once preferred because its return was high and its cost low, in future we will be left face to face with the problem of employing other professional groups that we may perhaps never be able to use.
Esteemed Guests,
Without limiting what the future will bring, professions must be defined on the basis of fundamental disciplines with a focus on “talent transfer”, and Türkiye’s socio-economic infrastructure must be shaped accordingly.
When evaluating the professions of the future;
1. The variables of the period must be analysed well
2. Vocational education must be evaluated on a common denominator with what comes before and after it.
The needs analysis is not merely a matter of where the state wishes to see itself. The difference between “education” and “vocational training” must be clearly set out.
Universities, colleges and high schools are of course institutions established for the sake of vocational training, but would it be correct to say that the young people who graduate from them have truly passed through education?
Just as work and profession are separate concepts, profession and education likewise contain equally separate definitions.
For example, management is not a profession but a job. Yet the majority of graduating young people come before us hard to please about work, imagining that after a year or two they can rise to the position of “manager”.
This is also why they cannot give a clear answer to the question: what is your profession? Management is a job, indeed a position. It is not only professional knowledge but at the same time
o Adaptation to the corporate culture
o Respect for ethical values
o Merit and corporate loyalty
o A long process of in-house training and of course
o A form of assignment earned as a result of experience. On the other side of the needs analysis stand the wishes and demands of the industrialist, that is, the employer.
The answer to the question: what do we want? must also be clear. Employers are quite demanding on this matter.
In addition to this, we of course also demand manual and professional skill, the ability to learn quickly, and a character structure that is ambitious yet not contrary to personal ethics.
Of course the employer segment is right from its own point of view, but there is a matter we are overlooking: “HAS OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM MANAGED TO ACHIEVE A CYCLE OF TRAINING THAT WILL MEET ALL THESE DEMANDS?”
Another problem awaits an answer as well: to what extent does the new generation carry the criteria of the previous generation — patience, contentment, contemplation, trust in God, respect and acceptance — or must it carry them at all?
We are speaking of Generation Z, are we not? Then how well do we, as the employer segment, know this generation.
In recent months the Presidency’s Human Resources Office conducted a broad-scope survey among civil servants in Türkiye and published the results. It came before us with a set of questions covering age, education level, cultural differences, ethnic differences — that is, all the variables.
With such a survey one would in fact expect Türkiye’s talent map to emerge. Yet what emerged were the mismatches between the job and the worker, that is, between the job and the one who does it.
In the end, one of our fundamental problems became clear: are we hiring the right person for the right job? How are we training the right person for the right job?
Workplaces are in fact schools for new graduates. This is why we defined MÜSİAD as a “school”.
And now we are transforming it into an “academy”. That is, we are restructuring it as an academy that trains business people, bureaucrats or technocrats.
Because school life is merely an institutional structure that gives our young people knowledge in a professional sense. Whereas the business world should be a place that shapes those young people.
To this end, as an indication of the importance we attach to vocational education, we established a committee focused on Educational Planning and vocational Technical education within the scope of our Renewal process.
Our purpose in establishing this Committee is to support employment planning in the economy and to develop vocational education themed projects suited to the Türkiye of the future.
Another matter within this scope is the necessity of providing our young people with training on WORK ETHICS and CORPORATE ETIQUETTE.
Esteemed Guests,
Another matter we must underline while speaking of the economy and employment is the necessity of preparing new curricula for conventional professions in keeping with the rhythm of the future.
We will not be able to give up conventional professions so quickly. But it is within our power to add courses from different disciplines and branches to their curricula, or to increase compulsory internships in the field.
What we mean here is not a multidisciplinary understanding of education. That part will of course need to be addressed as well.
Here we are speaking only of enriching and updating traditional professional branches by taking courses from different but related disciplines.
For example, it is essential that young people receiving an education in economics be reinforced with mathematics, sector-specific courses, social psychology, law and computer courses.
Likewise, our young people studying business administration or accounting — public finance — need to be enriched with training in public diplomacy, tax law, economics, finance and modelling. Another example: let us take law.
It is an indispensable branch of profession, just like medicine, is it not? But the fact that jurists are remote from courses such as economics, business administration and quality management, industrial production and industrial engineering unfortunately leaves them barren under market conditions.
In short: the arrival of new professions is of course inevitable, but it is essential that the graduates at hand, or the young people who are still being educated in conventional professions while we complete our planning, also be put through curriculum updates so as to be prepared for the requirements of the new age.
Esteemed Guests,
The world of the future will in fact be possible through the best possible cultivation of the young minds that design the system.
Because these minds are in fact like engineers who design the system. That is, exceptional minds need to be discovered and put through a special education.
What is meant here is talent scouting. Because these children, these young people, are among us and are quietly waiting to be discovered.
To put it plainly, you cannot keep these talented children fixed in a single field. One field is not enough for these brothers and sisters of ours. It does not satisfy them.
For my own part, I say that they are marathon runners by birth.
We need to consider systems engineering not only in the technical field but as a management model, indeed as a manager profile. In this sense it may be said that: yes, the manager profile of the future is the systems engineer.
Because they are open to interdisciplinary transitions, and putting them through a multidisciplinary education in fact means resolving through one or two people a process that would otherwise require a great many staff — and that might perhaps suffer synchronization problems — in terms of applying process management, crisis management, and problem-solving and decision-making techniques.
Systems engineers ensure that all the elements of the intended outcome come together flawlessly and functionally.
They then determine the breakdowns of all disciplinary activities and design the processes through which the work will be carried out.
Most importantly, they ensure the coordination of design information with the fixed disciplinary teams.
We need a separate education policy and curriculum planning in order to train systems engineers.
Esteemed Guests,
The final matter I would like to touch upon is the necessity of also helping our students with regard to their personal inclinations and development.
School is an institution of instruction. But life requires being multifaceted and active.
The participation rates of our university graduates and students in civil society organizations are quite low. Of course we must not forget that this also stems from the staffing and management problems in civil society structures in Türkiye.
But young people are seasoned in such places. They mature there. Young people taking active roles in civil society organizations is a simulation for their future lives. Within the scope of YOUNG MÜSİAD, we aim for young people to become acquainted with industry and sectors at a very early age and to gain experience. To this end, we have renewed the structure of YOUNG MÜSİAD so that it will be far more active and participatory.
Another matter is that young people preparing for the future do not take the trouble for their personal development. What are these;
We are faced with a youth that is remote from reading books and from research.
Reading is not a leisure-time hobby. It is a necessity.
It begins at a very early age and confronts the person with the possibility that other lives may exist. That is, it leaves the person alone with himself.
A person who reads acquires the capacity to invent, develops the ability to empathize, and expresses his emotions far more easily.
Unfortunately, we cannot intervene after the age of 40 with someone who has not acquired the habit of reading when young. It is not possible for a person who does not read to renew or refresh himself.
I believe that this habit of not reading also lies at the root of the language-learning problems of young people in Türkiye.
Because as they move away from the concept of curiosity, young people imagine that they are happy with the life they have. But since they do not know how to be content either, with high speed and low capacity or accumulation they unfortunately continue their working lives amid disappointments, and we may say that an unhappy youth is coming.
In short: high ambition requires high resolution!
Distinguished Guests,
It is not possible for us to take correct and sound decisions on any matter that we have not spoken about and debated.
If need be, we will criticize ourselves in the most realistic way and set out our shortcomings so that we may find what is right. Self-criticism and self-reckoning are among the most fundamental conditions for taking the right step.
I would like to express that I find this organization very valuable because it has reminded us — business people, industrialists and academics above all — of this reckoning once again.
I thank everyone who has contributed, and I greet you with respect and affection.
Abdurrahman Kaan
President of MÜSİAD