MÜSİAD ORDU BRANCH OPENING
7 FEBRUARY 2020
Honourable Chairman of our High Board, Esteemed Branch Presidents,
Esteemed Representatives of the Business World,
Esteemed Members and Friends of MÜSİAD, My Young MÜSİAD Brothers and Sisters,
Esteemed Members of Our Local and National Press,
At this gathering where we have come together on the occasion of the opening of MÜSİAD Ordu, I respectfully greet you all; welcome, you have honoured us with your presence.
Distinguished Guests,
Today, being here in order to add yet another link to MÜSİAD’s ever expanding and strengthening organizational network is an honourable step both for our country and for our institution.
MÜSİAD is forever proud of entrepreneurs like you — courageous and devoted to their homeland — whose labour and whose sweat are present in every inch of Anatolia, and who work, employ and produce with every means at their disposal for the prosperity of this country.
When we set out on this road 30 years ago as a handful of volunteers, we took an oath: whatever comes from our hands, from our lives and from our hearts, let it be sacrificed on the path of this homeland and of the ummah, we said.
For 30 years, without losing that same awareness and consciousness, and despite every kind of difficulty, intrigue and hardship, we have reached these days by growing with the strength God has given us, with persistence and with determination.
May God never separate us from our love of homeland, from our spirit of ummah and from the word of God. And may He never give an opportunity to those who wish to separate us!
My Dear Brothers and Sisters,
The year 2020 has begun harshly. Even what has been experienced within a single month gives us clues about the difficulties of the period ahead.
In our beginning-of-year assessment meetings, we dwelt upon these matters that were to be experienced in the world, in Türkiye and around us. We presented all our warnings, precautions and proposals to the highest authorities in a manner and a style befitting us. And we continue to work in the same way.
On this occasion, I pray for God’s mercy upon our citizens who lost their lives in the natural disasters and accidents experienced in our country over the past month, and I wish patience and fortitude to those they left behind.
We extended aid and support to every disaster area as far as we were able. And we shall continue to do so. May God not test us with hardships we cannot overcome.
Furthermore, on account of the epidemic that emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan and continues to pose a threat first of all to the people of that country and to the whole world, we contacted our representative office in China and stated that we would stand by the people of the region with all the assistance within our power.
Far from seeking any advantage from such a disaster, our nation stands beside all the peoples of the world in order to bind up the wounds of every kind of disaster as far as its strength allows.
We have never acted according to the philosophy of “long live the snake that does not touch me”. Nor shall we!
However, let whoever casts an eye upon the peace of our nation, the security of our lands, the survival of our state and the existence of our national values know this: he will find before him a flood of people as courageous and as sincere as those gathered here today.
In every inch of these lands there is the blood of martyrs. Every inch of it is sacred to us, and every one of its people is our brother.
It is enough that his heart beats with love of nation, of country and of homeland. Our door and our table are open to everyone whose cause is Türkiye. May God grant us too the privilege of handing over the trust at the rank of martyrdom.
My Dear Brothers and Sisters,
While we expand our fields of activity all over the world, we are at the same time weaving a strong network within our country and reaching every one of our cities.
Alongside general issues, we also identify local problems and develop proposals for solutions. For this reason MÜSİAD, unlike other NGOs, makes a great contribution to regional development.
Accordingly, in order to provide our ever expanding structure with a management model that is far more effective and able to offer far greater benefit to our members, we launched our Renewal process.
Praise be to God, we have begun to reap its fruits as well. At 314 points across the world in total, in a structure of such magnitude, we are also about to complete the integration of the system.
We have built a structural model that is project-based, that offers far broader opportunities to a greater number of its members, and that blends the production–trade–investment line within a culture of partnership.
On this arduous road we set out upon with the prayer that God would not put us to shame, in less than even 1.5 years, thanks be to God, we have received very positive responses to this renewal movement both in the field and in the eyes of the state.
There are now institutions that seek to adapt this system, recorded as the MÜSİAD model, to their own structures.
We have entered into a far more comprehensive integration with state institutions. The number of institutions and organizations that act together with us — and that wish to do so — in terms of both planning and execution increases with each passing day.
We take pride in seeing the projects we have proposed being realized one by one at the level of the ministries.
It gladdens us that some of the projects we have set in motion are being presented as solutions that accelerate the development of industry in Türkiye and the industrialization processes of SMEs, the driving force of Anatolian capital.
Indeed, the fact that our industrial restructuring movement, together with its medium-scale industrial zones, has expanded and turned MÜSİAD into a standard-setting and accreditation body in this field adds enthusiasm to our enthusiasm and strength to our strength.
My Dear Brothers and Sisters,
All this effort and all this struggle is for you.
Consider this: when we offered options for diversity in tourism resources, work of this kind was not being carried out even at the level of the ministries.
Today 21 headings such as highland tourism, gastro tourism, Turkish culinary arts and health tourism have now been incorporated into the national plans.
In the same way, we designed industrial campuses in order to support the industrialization movement of medium-scale enterprises.
We have become the body that sets the standards for these campuses. One of the eight regions we have designated across the country lies on the northern Anatolia line, and Ordu is one of the provinces within this region.
Our project to develop the trade transport lines whose importance in the world grows by the day, and to establish logistics bases suited to provinces such as Ordu that are both close to maritime logistics and possessed of a land hinterland, is about to be realized.
Ever since the first day I came to office, I have insistently spoken of the concepts of city economies and of producing brand cities.
Our city-matching project is nearing completion.
In the future it will not be states but cities that compete. To this end, we ensured that this matter was taken up in particular within the framework of the 11th Development Plan.
Indeed, praise be to God, with a Presidential circular the concept of smart cities and city brands has been registered as a national movement.
Every city has a chemistry and values peculiar to itself. The main aim of this work of ours is to bring out the strong sides of the cities, to match them with their counterparts across the World, and to turn our cities into world brands and world cities.
In order to take rural transformation beyond being merely an agricultural movement, to develop the countryside too within an urban environment and comfort, and thereby to support reverse migration, we designed our Kırkentler Project.
This project aims to increase the productive power of our own lands and to design an economic architecture suited to every province and region.
Its second step is to transform the relations of the provinces with one another into a trade and investment network and to bring them together with partnership and investment proposals from abroad.
Seen from this perspective, MÜSİAD INVEST is not merely an investment development model; it is the running of the production, trade and investment system in such a way that each supports the others.
Within the scope of MÜSİAD INVEST, each of our branches and representative offices will become the production-trade and investment base of its own region.
To this end we have launched our country’s most comprehensive production–trade–investment planning and partnership structuring movement.
We have opened committees dedicated solely to these activities. We have also begun to establish these committees within the local organizations.
Within a very short time, working committees suited to the economic structure of every province and region will be put into operation, and thus the contact and the cooperation of our networks in Anatolia with the head office will be strengthened.
In Ordu too we shall launch pilot studies within the scope of our projects on highland tourism, the development of logistics networks, rural transformation and urbanization, and the establishment of investment bases with medium-scale industrial campuses.
Now, in order to offer you far more effective support, we have begun to establish fund pools.
These pools offer support for your projects, a resource for your investments and an efficient operating model for your savings alike.
With this three-legged structure, which we have named the Independent Values Fund, we are designing a MÜSİAD that is far stronger in cash terms.
My Dear Brothers and Sisters,
We want everyone to win.
We know that a Türkiye that achieves regional development will also possess great power on the road to overall development.
As business people devoted to their country, their state and their nation, we are always ready to put our shoulder to the wheel for this goal.
We read the conditions of our country and of the world, and the processes now unfolding, correctly, and we analyse them well.
To every minister and every bureaucrat who gladly accepts our invitation, we explain the opportunities and the threats we see with regard to these processes. They no longer find before them, as in the past, a MÜSİAD that expresses an opinion only at certain times.
MÜSİAD now stands before us as a colossal structure and a system model that offers proposals, creates solution sets, plans and executes all at once.
There is now a MÜSİAD whose system and structure are imitated, and which is closely followed and drawn upon for inspiration through its projects and the new concepts it brings to the field.
Praise be to my Lord for bringing us to these days.
Praise be to my Lord for not putting us to shame on this road.
Praise be to my Lord for opening our way on this arduous road we set out upon.
My Dear Brothers and Sisters,
In our first days in office we had a saying: one must be a man of the truth, not a man of the day. The day changes, but the truth abides”
The truth is that working and producing keep us forever fresh.
The truth is that this homeland deserves every kind of sacrifice.
The truth is that MÜSİAD is a path of brotherhood and of homeland.
Praise be to my Lord that He has not parted us from this road — and may He never part us from it!
My Dear Brothers and Sisters
As I bring my words to a close, I wish that our new branch may bring blessings to our country, and above all to Ordu and the Black Sea Region.
I wish success to our Branch President Süleyman Bey and to his board, in the belief that they will accomplish successful work, and I thank our MÜSİAD Local High Board Chairman Ahmet Bey and the committee members, together with everyone who contributed to this fine organization. May God protect you.
Abdurrahman Kaan
President of MÜSİAD