TEKMÜSKOOP GROUNDBREAKING CEREMONY
9 NOVEMBER 2019
TEKİRDAĞ
Honourable President of the Presidency of Strategy and Budget
Honourable Deputy Minister of Industry and Technology,
Honourable Governor, Honourable Metropolitan Mayor,
Honourable General Manager of Türkiye Halk Bankası
Distinguished Representatives of the Business World and of NGOs,
Our Esteemed MÜSİAD Members and Executives,
You Distinguished Representatives of Our Press,
On this special day, when we experience excitement, happiness and pride all at once, I respectfully greet you all; welcome, you have honoured us with your presence.
We said that our homeland needs a brand-new story, and we set out on the road.
For 30 years, whatever has fallen to us for the sake of this country, we have said with all our heart, flowing like clear and pure waters: WE ARE HERE.
We are here, and we shall continue to be here. Because our cause is Türkiye.
Because our cause is our homeland, our people and our ummah.
How wonderful it is to be together with you here today, to feel the peace and the joy of coming together once again at the beginning of a brand-new story!
Bless your feet for coming. Bless your hearts.
I should like to continue with the profound verses of the Master, as though they had been written for this very journey of ours:
Sow the seed; if it does not sprout, let the soil be ashamed!
Let the spear that does not reach its target be ashamed!
Oh, noble steed, mind your running!
If you burst, let the mare that bore you be ashamed!
As MÜSİAD, we entered our 30th Year with the principle of RENEWAL.
So as not to be left behind, taking into account the new paradigms of the new world,
we set out two years ago to write a new story.
How full of hope and how honouring it is to be at the opening ceremony of one of the results, one of the fruits, that renewal has yielded.
Esteemed guests,
MÜSİAD is now a mighty plane tree whose seeds were sown 30 years ago.
A mighty plane tree that has stood upright throughout our country's journey of existence, always standing tall beside its state and its nation.
In its 30th Year, MÜSİAD is ready for the new era with such enormous projects, project-based, goal-oriented, and with the advantages given by being able to reach every kind of field knowledge in the capillaries of the homeland.
May God grant us success on the path we have set out upon. May He never let us be put to shame.
Esteemed Guests,
Such developments are taking place in the world that merely following change itself requires a separate labour.
We had said, as this century began, that speed is the key variable of our age.
Yet when we look around us we witness such instantaneous changes that our power of reflex is virtually put to the test.
We are so surrounded by a web of change across the world that one feels like speaking in the Thracian dialect and saying, “What on earth are you all doing!”
Esteemed guests, dear friends of MÜSİAD,
The elements of national power are changing. Classical economic theories fall short of explaining the new economic architecture.
You need to renew yourselves and to be synchronized.
See, in the past the elements of national power were confined to land, military strength, people and money; today they have reached a multiplicity that points to field depth in almost every area
You need to say new words, to bring forth new works and new ideas.
Even the road to becoming a strong country no longer passes solely through a strong economic structure.
According to the new balances of power, there are new elements of national power. What are they?
1. Information networks and clean commercial information that will support the economy,
2. A social structure that has internalized the ability to stand on its own with its values and its authentic culture, 3. Synchronization among the stakeholders of the economic system,
4. National and domestic production models,
5. A qualified workforce equipped through a planned education system,
6. Planning for a sustainable future,
7. Effective and efficient use of resources
8. A legal system focused on solving problems rather than on imposing penalties
9. A national capital structure and stock accredited in the international sense
10. Not only military and political but at the same time economic and commercial diplomacy networks 11. An ecosystem favourable to investment
12. Investment policies oriented towards localization and, finally,
That of which the very occasion of our gathering here today is the example;
The reconsideration of urbanization in a manner conducive to reconciling the layers of society
Esteemed guests,
In our RENEWAL process, for a new story, we put forward a socio-economic development model that we named the National Economic Architecture, or MİM for short.
Expecting every stage of development from the state is losing its meaning in a world where the old rules of realpolitik have collapsed.
The new world order now has its new rules, its new players, its new models and its new generations.
We are obliged to take these four elements into account in our decision-making mechanisms.
Because an entirely different generation, to whom we shall hand over the flag, awaits us, and all our investments are in truth a preparation for the Türkiye that will be theirs.
We, as MÜSİAD, act with this awareness.
Esteemed Guests,
The project we present here today is not merely an industrial estate; it is the modelled form, as national production bases, of a national technology drive that will develop in a planned manner together with urbanization.
It is a new standard for our country.
Yesterday we held the opening of our Mawlid an-Nabi Exhibition organized by our MÜSİAD Art brand. I should like to share with you here a matter that I also conveyed to our Honourable Minister of Industry, Mr. Mustafa Varank, who made us happy by honouring us with his presence:
The TESMÜSKOOP Industrial Base has been designed as a national production and technology base, far beyond the logic of the classical industrial estate.
Türkiye is an earthquake country. This model has been built so as to withstand even an earthquake of magnitude 8.5.
We made a request and said: with its logic of establishment, its model of construction and its campus planning alike, let this new model represent a standard for organized industrial zones.
And let no understanding of industrial estates below these standards be permitted.
That this request of ours was met with interest and acceptance by our Honourable Minister has made us particularly happy.
At the same time, MÜSİAD once again feels the justified pride of having set a standard for yet another way of doing business in our country.
Esteemed Guests and Friends of MÜSİAD,
Indeed, MÜSİAD bases its renewal strategy upon this very principle:
To develop ways of doing business that are project-based, goal-oriented and that will bring gains both to its members and to society.
For a MÜSİAD in harmony with the new elements of national power of the new world, we are shaping our SAHA brands.
God willing, we shall share their launch with you at our Visionary 2019 event.
Because the starting point of this year's Visionary Meeting is likewise the theme of transformation.
We do not address transformation on a digital axis alone.
We underline that a planned transformation and a change of mindset are needed in our conventional sectors as well.
When our Head of Strategy and Budget, Mr. Naci Ağbal, honoured MÜSİAD with his visit while the 11th Development Plan was being prepared, we conveyed this matter and the models we had prepared to him.
That he showed his favour and gave them broad place within the plan has likewise pleased us greatly.
Likewise, our desire to work jointly with the Presidency of Strategy and Budget will continue, this time at the stage of putting the planning into action.
I should like to express this before you with great pleasure and honour. In this regard, I once again offer him my gratitude.
We, as MÜSİAD, setting out from the point that Agricultural Development initiates a social transformation, have placed the logic of building new towns into our Agricultural and Rural Development action plan.
With the protocol we concluded with TKDK and the models we shall operate thereafter, we shall very soon also launch our “RURAL TOWNS PROJECT”.
We are working in earnest on new facility models not only for transformation in agricultural production but also for the establishment of aquaculture production facilities and for making the seafood sector able to compete with world standards in our country, which is surrounded by seas on three sides.
Not only in seafood but in livestock breeding as well, the establishment of farms based on the principle of high productivity and the transformation of these farm models into national production bases are among our projects waiting in line.
Alongside all of this, we feel the excitement of coming before you very soon with a brand-new business model together with our Ministry of Tourism, in order to create city brands and to increase our country's brand value by bringing regional differences to the fore.
Setting out from the principle of energy efficiency, we shall also share with you at a very near date, together with our relevant committee, our project of enterprises that generate their own energy.
In our age, in which trade has turned into a network economy, the work we are carrying out to establish trade bases and to develop directional action plans for new logistics networks is likewise among the projects we shall present to you before this year is out.
In the same way, we have reconsidered our widespread organizational network abroad as a framework of external economic relations.
With our network of Trade and Investment Agencies, which we shall operate under the MÜSİAD INVEST brand, we shall have fulfilled the task of bringing domestic demand together with foreign resources and, in the same way, of channelling foreign demand to domestic resources.
The launch of this project too will be carried out before the end of this year, God willing.
I should like to underline once again that all of these are the fruits of renewal.
Esteemed Guests,
On this road, where the whole world has come upon us, yet along which we walk with determination without stepping back from our just cause, the direction drawn by our Honourable President is our road map.
No form of terrorism whatsoever can be forgiven or accepted.
Calling to account for the shedding of innocent blood is possible only through an art of politics that is brave and honourable, that fears no obstacle, and that proves itself both in the field and at the table.
In this process initiated by our Honourable President, I declare once again and in a loud voice, on behalf of myself and of my institution, that we stand beside him and beside our state with every element and every means at our disposal.
Let the Master be the interpreter of my feelings:
If this orphan edifice is left with the master,
Let the apprentice who does not carry it on be ashamed!
What you call arrival lies beyond death,
Let whatever is left behind be ashamed!
Esteemed guests
For the future and the reconstruction of Syria
and to take the hand of the Muslim business world there
our preparations to establish MÜSİAD SYRIA are proceeding at full speed. The examinations we carried out in Azaz both give hope to the people of the region and stand as proof that hope and humanity know no borders.
MÜSİAD is present at 312 points of the world. And it will continue to be present.
As I bring my words to a close, I first of all thank from the heart all our guests, and above all the dignitaries of the state, for honouring us with their presence.
To the President of our PRODUCTION and TRADE PLANNING HIGH Board, who is at the same time the Chairman of our Committee for Building Cities and Industrial Campuses, Mr. Dr. Oktay Dede, who laboured for the realization of this project and its completion within a short space of time; and, for his support in carrying the project to the field, to our MÜSİAD LOCAL High Board
President, Mr. Ahmet Şekerli; and to all MÜSİAD Tekirdağ members, above all our MÜSİAD Tekirdağ Branch President, and to everyone who laboured for it, I offer my heartfelt gratitude.
Let us close once again with a saying from Tekirdağ: Let those who say that pumpkins do not grow in this field be ashamed.
I thank you for your patience and offer you my respects. May God protect you