TEXT OF THE SPEECH AT THE SESSION OF THE 26TH MÜSİAD ORDINARY GENERAL ASSEMBLY ATTENDED BY THE PRESIDENT-FINAL
Mr. President, Honourable Madam, Esteemed Ministers,
Esteemed Assembly, Esteemed Members of the Press,
On this day on which we are holding MÜSİAD's 26th Ordinary General Assembly, I offer my gratitude to your excellency, on behalf of myself and of my institution, for honouring us once again with your presence and your support, Mr. President. As I hand the duty over to our next esteemed brothers, on the path you have opened for us and in your goals, in order to walk with love of country and to be ever ready in the service of our state, I thank in your presence everyone who did not leave us alone on this blessed day and everyone who contributed. Welcome, you have honoured us.
O beloved;
Since my heart fell in love with you
I suffer neither loneliness nor sorrow
When you are the centre of attachment
My heart becomes a bird and mingles with the birds
The name of the climate changes, the taste of life changes.
How beautifully the Master described the burning of a servant devoted to a love. We carried this homeland, this ummah, like a fire in the heart, and raised them in love. We passed through such hard times, yet we did not falter. Ever since the heart was seized by this love, the name of life and of the climate alike has changed. Its meaning has been renewed. Every hope seeks a reason of its own in order to blaze up.
My esteemed President, you are the one who gave us that reason. You turned the fire of Truth within us, the love of country, into an epic of salvation and of ascent. Every epic requires those who write it to stand upright and firm as an alif in their own duties.
Every duty is love itself.
Today, as I hand over my four-year duty to the next brother with peace of mind, I am honoured to present to your office, with pride, the point reached by the Institution of which my family was among the founders and within which I too grew up and matured.
My term of office coincided with what were perhaps Türkiye's most difficult periods and the ones in which we had to stand most firmly. Elections, foreign economic attacks, threats, the pandemic, natural disasters... As one ended, another began. But with the renewed new MÜSİAD identity we managed to respond to events immediately and with institutional maturity.
Mr. President,
From the very first day I took office I was aware that I was in a race against time. A model compatible with the 30-year-old giant plane tree, with a Renewed Türkiye and with our new state system was necessary. It needed to be renewed. It had to be such a model that it would both raise up again the decline in MÜSİAD's bureaucratic and social perception and endow this institution with a far more active, fast and productive structure.
But beforehand it was essential to make a technical analysis, down to the finest detail, of the institution's current situation and of how far the limits of its structuring could be expanded. We did this work with our professors who are meticulously trained in this matter and expert in systems engineering, and with our fellow travellers. Later we submitted it to the appreciation of our executives so that they might contribute to the structure. It was difficult, of course; but in the end MÜSİAD's next 10 years were mapped out.
In order for MÜSİAD to be a far more effective soldier of our state's organization in the SAHA and to serve as the organ that provides communication between government policies and the grassroots, we signed countless protocols with the state's largest institutions, its ministries and a great many bodies, organizations and universities. In this context nearly 900 meetings were arranged. 39 cooperation agreements and protocols were signed. 54 MoUs were signed in order to strengthen our international connections and to unite our domestic and international networks. In order to carry out our country's voluntary economic ambassadorship in commercial and diplomatic terms, 18 foreign trips were arranged by MÜSİAD. On various occasions 139 out-of-town programmes were held, and most of these were directed at institutionalizing MÜSİAD's international network.
Mr. President,
In the protocol signed with the Presidency of Strategy and Budget, all the relevant departments of the Presidency were matched with the relevant Committees on our side. Thus the necessary field information and a joint working environment for common projects were provided to the Presidency.
Agreement was reached with the Presidential Investment Office on merging MÜSİAD's international SAHA network. We ensured that MÜSİAD's network of branches and representative offices in 95 countries was redesigned with the logic of an Investment Agency. In this way we sought both to obtain economic intelligence in foreign countries and to establish an investment marketing system. Thus we planned a system for using MÜSİAD's branches like an investor hunt in order to turn Türkiye into an investment market, and for acting with the joint resources of MÜSİAD and the Investment Office in places the Presidential Investment Office cannot reach.
We gave this the short name M_TIA, that is, the MÜSİAD Trade and Investment Agencies Network.
Mr. President, this model, which we have made most compatible with Türkiye by taking the examples in Germany, Canada and Japan as our starting point, may, should you too deem it appropriate, even be put into practice immediately as the Türkiye Trade and Investment Agency System, by carrying it up to a higher segment and treating MÜSİAD as the field organization of this structure. For all the organizational work, from its directive to its operation, has been completed and is ready to be submitted to your person.
As for the domestic leg of the MTIA system, we gave it the name MÜSİAD INVEST. That is, bringing together on a project basis our firms that wish to invest, that are institutionally ready at every scale and that pass certain tests, with foreign investor partners or financiers.
Now, in this period in which we need direct investment most, I am honoured to present these models we have developed to your person, and I am glad to entrust them to the brother who takes over the duty after me.
We also worked with the Presidential Finance Office. The aim here was, by making use of MÜSİAD's international field presence in the flow of hot money to Türkiye, to transfer towards our country, through appropriate financial instruments and investment projects here, the investments and savings that Turks abroad make in the countries where they live, what we call the investment diaspora.
For this we created interest-free finance models: the cooperative finance system, the savings-based finance system and Venture Capital funds, and in this context we brought 53 multi-partner projects to life. We reached an agreement with the Finance Office for MÜSİAD too to have an office within the scope of the Free Finance Zone, to run the process actively from there, and for money to enter the country directly on a project or investment basis. However, my term of office was not enough to complete this. I entrust this important duty to my brothers who come after me.
Esteemed Mr. President,
Joint working protocols were signed with a great many Ministries for projects that made an impact. A very important project was launched with the Ministry of Agriculture through the Smart Agricultural Cities Model. This week a very meticulous and comprehensive 500-page report entitled Rural Development and the Future of Agriculture in the Second Century of the Republic was completed by our Rural Development Committee and conveyed to the relevant parties. This too is of course one of the examples that show us how right a choice it was to move to a structure founded on committee-based project production.
Together with our Ministry of Industry and Technology and also with the Presidency of Strategy and Budget, in a three-way partnership, we completed in Tekirdağ the prototype of our project, which we call SME Incubation Centers and which was taken up as a single item on the YOİKK agenda under State Auspices. We launched its second example in İstanbul Hadımköy as an undertaking bringing together 5 cooperatives, containing approximately 3000 workplaces and producing TRY 50 billion of added value in 2023 figures. We shall move to the groundbreaking phase at the end of this year.
For new examples of this serial model, work on bringing cooperatives together and on land acquisition under the Auspices of the Ministry of Environment and Urbanization is continuing.
Our aim with this project is to institutionalize 2000 enterprises a year into medium-sized ones and, in 10 years, to grow 20,000 enterprises and thereby provide a contribution of USD 200 billion a year to gross domestic product.
Mr. President,
We established a special committee in the field of Turkish Culinary Arts and gastro-economy, and I both had serious work carried out on Culinary Exports and, in order for this subject to be addressed from different angles, informed both our members and the relevant officials in every province I went to. Because only when each city is evaluated with its own assets will city economies produce added value. In the 107 press statements and 136 city visits I made in total, I explained at every opportunity how cities would be taken up anew and branded through their unique values.
Indeed, we published a comprehensive report on the theme of Branding Cities Through Their Unique Values and High-Value-Added City Economies, and shared it with the press at a meeting at the level of economy directors. The aim here was to ensure that each city's own particular values were taken up one by one with appropriate investment and incentive systems and turned into an asset, that is, into capital stock. Indeed, for this we presented to each of our cities international examples very close to their own values, and I explained one by one how they provide more added value to their own countries' gross domestic product. Because this was my duty.
Everywhere I went we carried out work supporting Women's Cooperatives. MÜSİAD Women was restructured. Today we have an active MÜSİAD Women Organizational Network at 18 points. With its 250 members, the MÜSİAD Women's Committee has become Türkiye's largest structure of women industrialists and businesswomen. Our aim was not only to bring more of the female population into production and trade, but at the same time to strengthen and consolidate our Women's structure as an active element in the period that awaits us ahead.
Young MÜSİAD has ceased to be a passive structure watching its elder brothers or its fathers from a corner and waiting for its turn to come, and has become an active infrastructural element of MÜSİAD. Today, with 4000 members at 56 points, they are working as soldiers ready to take part in and to support both economic and political life.
In addition to all this, the name of the MÜSİAD organization was deliberately changed to SAHA. Because SAHA is the language of a wide presence, of strength, and of having a say not only in the country but also abroad. MÜSİAD SAHA is now an arena of competition with the Capital Institutions that may be considered our counterparts in their international reach.
Indeed, both the theme of Transformation that we drew at Visionary 2017 and the themes of the Digital Future that we drew at Visionary 2019, which was MÜSİAD seeing and structuring its tomorrow already today, were a very fine photograph of how it devised the future with a strategic mind, by bringing together names of great renown worldwide. This photograph became the proof of MÜSİAD's ancient and now unchanging voice at the table.
Mr. President,
We did all of this so that MÜSİAD's share in the increase of the national and domestic capital stock would reach considerable levels and, of course, so that we would be prepared with all our structures to struggle for the values we believe in during the political processes that await us. Thank God, we achieved most of it, and the whole public is witness; many of MÜSİAD's successes were applauded standing, like a phoenix rising from its ashes. Praise be to God, my Lord showed me these days. Now I entrust to my brothers not a standard non-governmental organization but a Capital Platform that is, in the strategic sense, a work of systems engineering.
When you came to the EXPO 2020 Fair, we worked on the duty you reminded us of with your words: “There can be no separation in capital. The merging of capital means the increase of capital strength,” you had said. As you too know very closely, I began this process during my term of office. Indeed, I conveyed the report containing the stages and the results of the process both to your deputy, Mr. Fuat Oktay, and to your excellency. We launched our work on this matter and a great many technical contacts took place with the capital institutions that are our counterparts; indeed, we hosted them. However, just as the intervening Pandemic process suspended a great many things, it also caused disruptions in this process. This process will continue from where it left off.
Speaking of the pandemic and disasters, we acted in this matter with the awareness that standing by our nation in the SAHA is a command of Truth for us. If you recall, our first starting point was the motto “Together.” Then we said “WE ARE HERE.” Together, in good days and bad, we said we are here for everything. Because we proclaimed this structure in such a way that, when your humble brother set out once again on the roads of Anatolia after the Pandemic, and as we said WE ARE HERE this time, all our soldiers in Anatolia, our entire network, rose to their feet with enthusiasm, with joy and with longing. Our “Corona Crisis Center,” which we structured rapidly during a difficult pandemic period, both found favour in the eyes of the state and took on the role of a lifeline in order to relieve as far as possible our members' demands and troubles in their difficult days. No other institution had been able to organize so quickly in a fire that engulfed the world all at once, such as the Pandemic. Because our new system was suited to this.
As we said We Are Here, strength and hope came to our nation. Praise be to God, my Lord did not disgrace me and my team on this difficult journey. Throughout my 1550-day term of office I made nearly 400 city visits, and thus, constantly taking the public's pulse and with constant feedback, we strove to keep both the system and the institutional structure standing. In 1550 days, 2112 activities were carried out. 779 of these were contacts with Public Institutions and Organizations and the hosting of delegations; 842 were meetings and programmes across Türkiye and Anatolia, and 491 were visits to Ministries and Institutions. We chose that it be a presidency that does not stand at the centre but personally touches the people and our members and is in contact with our state and our government officials. Because we said that the true language of communication is one-to-one contact and the opening of hearts. The method you taught us and the path you drew were also along these lines.
Now, as I hand over my duty with an easy heart, as is the MÜSİAD tradition of brotherhood, I say to the brothers who take over the duty after me that, whatever may happen, we are always by your side.
Mr. President,
I regard it as a debt, on behalf of my Institution and myself, to thank you especially for honouring us once again with your presence. Furthermore, I thank in your presence my fellow board of directors members from both of my terms, my deputy president and vice president colleagues, my high board presidents, my chief presidential advisor, my committee chairmen, my branch and representative office presidents at home and abroad, you our esteemed members, and our former presidents.
I also wish success to our new board of directors.
In this context I ask you to grant me your forgiveness and blessing.
I also thank all our professional staff, above all our secretary general, who contributed to the preparation of this organization.
I express my gratitude in your presence to my mother, whose labour in bringing me into life, in raising me and in the formation of my character cannot be denied, and to my late father, to my family who support me, to my children, to my grandchildren and, of course, to my esteemed wife Zehra Hanımefendi, my greatest supporter, like the invisible hand behind every successful man.
I also pray for God's mercy upon our members who have served our institution since its founding and upon our members who died of illness during the Corona period. May their resting places be paradise.
I would like to complete the time allotted to me with the words of the Master. For the road I set out on was the road of love.
Blessing from the fire of the sun,
It brings forth roses, bunch upon bunch,
Ungrateful servants know not its worth,
Sweet is Your fire and sweet is Your light.
Troubles are from You, the cure is from You,
Healing for the ailing servant is from You,
The fidelity in Job is from You,
Sweet is Your fire, sweet is Your light.
Once again, grant me your forgiveness and blessing. Thank you, may you be well, may God protect you.
As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.
Abdurrahman Kaan
MÜSİAD 6th Term President