MINISTER OF INDUSTRY AND TECHNOLOGY OF THE REPUBLIC OF TÜRKİYE MUSTAFA VARANK: “NO EXCHANGE RATE IS STRONGER THAN THE ECONOMIC REALITY OF THE TURKISH ECONOMY”
At MÜSİAD VISIONARY 2021, organized with the theme “Take notice”, Minister of Industry and Technology of the Republic of Türkiye Mustafa Varank, who delivered the opening speech, said: “No exchange rate is stronger than the economic reality of the Turkish economy. Our business people, more than anyone else, need to know the level the Turkish economy has reached and the capacity it possesses. Thankfully, MÜSİAD has spoken knowing this, and it continues to speak. Now we are all watching together the developments in favour of the Turkish lira taking place in the markets as a result of the new instruments and the economic manifesto announced by our esteemed President the other day. Are we surprised that those who openly lie by saying that no factories are being opened, no production is being carried out and no employment is being created in Türkiye also find a thousand and one faults with these new financial instruments? Of course we are not surprised. But we will pay no attention to them. We will mind our own business. Our fundamental priority is to ensure stability in the exchange rate and in prices.”
Underlining that new technologies and new applications are being developed around the world with each passing day and that the continuity of investments in this field has gained importance, Varank said: “We too are taking the necessary steps to ease the investment burden of our SMEs in this regard. Through KOSGEB’s various programs, we provide financial support for expenditures within the scope of digital transformation“. Drawing attention to the fact that the number of technoparks, which was only 5 in 2002, has risen to 89 today, Varank said: ”The development of the entrepreneurship ecosystem constitutes one of the most important goals of our Ministry“.
“IT IS IMPORTANT TO TAKE NOTICE OF THE DETAILS”
MÜSİAD President Mahmut Asmalı, speaking at the opening of the event that guides the future of the business world under the main headings “Take Notice of the Digital”, “Take Notice of the Climate”, “Take Notice of Enterprise”, “Take Notice of Transformation”, drew attention to the importance of daring and of taking notice with the words: “The Muslim scientist Al-Jazari took notice, through his engineering marvels, that the first robotics and simple machines could be created, and laid the foundations of today’s software systems. The astronomer Ali Kuşcu, raising his head to the boundless sky, took notice of the solar system and the stars, and became the means for the opening of the space age that shed light on science. The genius of medicine Avicenna, known to us as Ibn Sina, invented anaesthesia, and the surgeries of the modern age began to be performed painlessly. Mevlânâ took notice that reaching everyone from seven to seventy would be possible through the language of the heart, and his work the Masnavi is still taught today as a scholarly source in many universities around the world. Our Nobel laureate Turkish scientist Aziz Sancar took notice of that small detail in the DNA, and a new era began in cancer research”.
MAHMUT ASMALI: “THE TURKISH ECONOMY STANDS FIRM TODAY, AS IT DID IN THE PAST, AGAINST ALL PERCEPTION MANIPULATIONS OF BOTH DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN ORIGIN”
“As we all know, as a country we have recently been passing through narrow gates. We observe with sorrow that recently an artificial climate of distrust not based on macroeconomic fundamentals has been sought to be created. As MÜSİAD, we stand against every kind of economic climate steered by perceptions rather than by real economic indicators. The Turkish economy stands firm today, as it did in the past, against all perception manipulations of both domestic and foreign origin,” said MÜSİAD President Mahmut Asmalı, who continued his remarks as follows: “We believe that our economy, which for the last 20 years has achieved average annual growth of %5.3 without compromising free market conditions, will come through this process with the lightest damage as well. We reiterate that we support our new “low interest oriented” policy, whose foundations were laid under the leadership of our President Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and which we believe will multiply many times over our gains focused on production, exports, employment and growth. The relief observed in the markets following the announcement of the measures and incentives in question by our President Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will continue in the medium and long term as well, and the Turkish Lira will regain its former strength. On this occasion, we would like to state once again before you that pricing that does not rest on real economic developments and is made according to temporary and artificial developments is always doomed to lose. In addition, we all know that interest places a serious barrier before access to financing and to a large extent prevents the increase in new investments. We believe that as the retreat in interest rates is reflected in all financing costs, primarily commercial ones, investments will also increase rapidly.”
“E-COMMERCE VOLUME HAS INCREASED 15-FOLD IN THE LAST 10 YEARS”
Stating that traditional strategies in marketing practices have given way to digital strategies under the influence of information technology and globalization, Asmalı said that the e-commerce volume had increased 15-fold in the last 10 years to reach USD 4.2 trillion, and continued his remarks as follows: "The e-commerce sector, which is growing rapidly around the world, now holds an important place in all our lives. We want our country to have a large share in this volume as well, and that is why we say Take Notice of E-Commerce, in short, Take Notice of the Digital.”
MAHMUT ASMALI: MÜSİAD’S CLIMATE MANIFESTO ANNOUNCED
Saying “Unfortunately our country is losing its four-season character day by day; a tornado can occur in the middle of İstanbul or snow can fall on Antalya in an unprecedented way — in short, climates are changing, global warming is affecting our lives”, Asmalı announced MÜSİAD’S climate manifesto at Visionary 21 and said that he was ready to meet, to cooperate and to join forces with everyone whose common denominator is producing benefit for humanity.
MÜSİAD VISIONARY 21 EXECUTIVE BOARD CHAIRMAN ERKAN GÜL: “EVERYTHING BEGAN BY TAKING NOTICE!”
MÜSİAD Visionary 21 Executive Board Chairman Erkan Gül, touching on the importance of taking notice in the speech he delivered at the opening of the summit, said: “While we try to build today better with the experience we have gained from the past, we also want to create values that add vision for our tomorrows. That is why at the Visionary’21 Summit we say take notice of the digital, the climate, enterprise and transformation. As you know, climates are changing, cities face the risk of being submerged… Animal species are becoming extinct… The climate crisis is now making itself felt in a striking way. Today the climate crisis undoubtedly constitutes the most important part of the current multidimensional crisis spreading across the economic, political, cultural and social levels. With the Paris Climate Agreement, a limit of +1.5 degrees was accepted for global warming, which has been rising since the Industrial Revolution. Greenhouse gas emissions increase global warming, and this situation is the climate crisis … For the first time in the world a woman was given the diagnosis of “climate change” as the cause of illness... The World Health Organization estimates that more than 150 thousand people lose their lives every year because of climate change… In short, esteemed guests, all of us need to Take Notice of the Climate… We take notice of the increasing climate disasters worldwide, but how far do we act?”
Stating in his speech that start-ups are extremely important for the future, Gül underlined that he took part on the Start-up Exchange Stage at Visionary 21. Saying that Star Talks conversations featuring experts in their fields would also take place on the Exchange stage, which pioneers the B2B meetings where enterprises meet investments, Gül said: ”The two differences that make this year special are our NFT digital art exhibition and the innovative awards we give to our start-ups. In addition, unlike previous years, we are considering continuing the Visionary’21 Take Notice Summit at certain intervals until 2023. We want to scatter the seeds of silicon valleys in certain cities of our Anatolia.”
İSTANBUL CHAMBER OF COMMERCE PRESIDENT ŞEKİB AVDAGİÇ “TÜRKİYE’S SHARE OF GREEN TECHNOLOGY PATENTS IS STILL AT A RATE OF 3 PER THOUSAND”
İstanbul Chamber of Commerce President Şekib Avdagiç touched on the importance of green transformation in the speech he delivered at the opening of Visionary 21 and said: “According to research, the average temperature in the world has risen by a little more than 1° centigrade since 1880. Two thirds of the warming has occurred since 1975, at a rate of roughly 0.15 to 0.20°C every 10 years. And 2021 became the year with the highest temperatures since temperature measurements began. There is only 2°C left before the world turns into one huge greenhouse. Green transformation is the most important part of the solution against the approaching danger… In this context, the EU announced the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism and the border carbon tax timetable. There is also a search for a new path in technological transformation and economic growth. The ‘Green Deal’ brought onto the agenda by the EU is seen as a comprehensive instrument that triggers this technological transformation and economic growth. The EU sees green technologies as a field in which it can gain a competitive advantage on a global scale. According to OECD data, the EU’s share of green technology patents over the last 10 years is around 25 percent… The combined share of the USA and Japan is around 50 percent. They are followed by Germany. China is about to catch up with Germany. Over the last 10 years China’s share has risen from around 3 percent to over 10 percent. Unfortunately, Türkiye’s share of green technology patents is still at a rate of 3 per thousand. Of course there is an upward trend in the share we take. But it is quite clear that we are considerably behind… Therefore we need to engage in very rapid work.”
The awards of the Visionary'21 Entrepreneurship Competition found their owners
Following the opening speeches, the winners of the Entrepreneurship Competition held in 3 categories within the scope of MÜSİAD Visionary'21 also received their awards. While Saha Robotik (Murat Ayrancı) from Bilişim Vadisi was the champion of the "Original Product" category, Çekirdek Ar-Ge (Emin Yücel) from Teknopark İstanbul in the "Product Without Borders" category and the Biriktir project (Yağmur Gömürlü) from TÜBİTAK Marmara Teknokent (MARTEK) in "The Most Environmentally Friendly Product" were deemed worthy of first place.
“IRON WOMAN” TAWAKKOL KARMAN: “THE TRUE FUNCTION OF MONEY SHOULD BE DEVELOPMENT”
Known as the face of the 2011 Yemeni uprising turned towards international public opinion, 2011 Npbel Peace Prize laureate, Yemeni journalist and politicianTawakkol Karman said in her speech on the Visionary'21 stage that transparency, being responsible and accountability lie at the basis of good governance. Touching on the necessity of creating fair and equal conditions, Karman said: “Equal opportunities must be created. On the other hand, dictatorial regimes do not have good governance. They monopolize resources and possibilities. They monopolize political, economic, social and cultural affairs. When we look in general at the dictatorial regimes in Arab countries, they do not allow capital other than their own to develop. And they impoverish people. Thus they produce policies that generate crises.”
“Money must have a social function”
Saying “In my view the true function of money should be development”, Karman said: “Money must have a social function. This comes first and foremost from ensuring that society is given its basic needs. The use of money must go beyond making profit. When we look at Islamic history, we can see how zakat kept society strong. We can also see how zakat reduced poverty and how it helped in different parts of the Islamic countries. Zakat is a system established in order to respond to people’s needs. It offers societies an important opportunity.”
Saying that millions of people in the world today are unemployed and poor, Karman said: “These people find themselves unemployed and deprived of the means of life. They see themselves right in the middle of poverty and the problem of food. In the age of information and the internet, in the age of technical knowledge and industry, in the age of technological development, they find themselves in such a life. They face this being imposed on them by the global system. They are exposed to the clash of interests of the great international powers. The great conflicts of the great powers do not consider human rights and the sustainability of peace. At the same time the financial and business sector also has a share in this. Many of them display an approach to the needs of their own societies marked by greed, selfishness and evasion of social responsibility. A social responsibility perspective is a necessity for societies. Countries must develop social responsibility in the face of poverty. The private sector and business people must develop social responsibility projects in order to fight poverty. At the same time, projects supporting small enterprises and projects supporting youth, women and disadvantaged groups should also be carried out”.
TUSAŞ GENERAL MANAGER TEMEL KOTİL: “WE HIRE 1,000 ENGINEERS A YEAR”
Speaking at the Visionary’21 summit, Temel Kotil, General Manager of Turkish Aerospace Industries Inc. (TUSAŞ), said that he was a 1983 graduate of İTÜ Aeronautical Engineering and that after graduating his biggest problem was where to find a job. Saying “My childhood passed with ‘We cannot do it, we are not able, they will not let us’, but that is not the case at all. Right now we are building the aircraft”, and giving information about the National Combat Aircraft, Kotil made the following statements: “Mr. Binali Yıldırım said, ‘If you cannot roll this aircraft out of the hangar on 18 March 2023, we will roll you off the 18 March bridge’. As engineers we have 4,600 engineers. At least 3,600 of them are new graduates. We hire 1,000 engineers a year.” Kotil also said that if a country is going to build aircraft it needs a wind tunnel, and that they had built one of the two important wind tunnels in Europe.
STEVEN YOUNG: “OUR INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL IS VERY IMPORTANT”
Steven Young, who after a 25-year career within the Bosch Group took on the role of Chief Executive Officer and Board Member of the Dalgakıran Group, shed light on the business world of the future at the Take Notice of Transformation Panel at Visionary. Saying “60 percent of the children going to primary school today will work in professions that do not exist today when they graduate from university”, Young, citing as an example the top 500 company lists of economy magazines, said: “When we compare the 2000 list with the 2020 list, 52 percent of the companies that entered the list in 2000 no longer exist. They are not only absent from the list, they are no longer active in the market either. This shows us the speed of change and its destructive power. While this is the situation for companies, when we look at the pace of people’s development, education comes to the fore in first place. People between the ages of 35 and 50 in particular are at the centre of this transformation. Therefore this adaptation must also be ensured.”
Saying that as the whole world we are in the midst of a great change and transformation, Young continued his remarks as follows: “Our intellectual capital is very important. In this sense our young people must receive all the support they deserve. As companies, we need to stand behind young people. I see our young people who go abroad as an opportunity. I find it very valuable that they experience several countries for 3-5 years and then return to Türkiye with intellectual capital and bring it to our country. The country’s demographic makeup is very favourable. Our young people are very bright. We also need to open our young people’s international horizons. We must see that the future has arrived.”
The author and psychiatrist Prof. Dr. Kemal Sayar, who has taken part as a speaker at numerous congresses and symposia in the field of psychiatry, and Prof. Dr Sadettin Ökten, known for his talks and works on the city and civilization and especially on Islamic civilization, also took their place at the summit. The two experts presented participants with a road map for preserving and developing the values of the business world and carrying them into the future, under the special panel heading ‘Take Notice of Values’.
At the Take Notice of Values session moderated by Meltem Karateke, psychologist-author Prof. Dr. Kemal Sayar and architect-author Prof. Dr. Saadettin Ökten discussed the phenomenon of values.
Psychiatrist Prof. Dr Kemal Sayar: “We must avoid different values in different places”
Psychiatrist Prof. Dr Kemal Sayar, referring to the values of our life, drew attention to the fact that our values determine the meaning of life. Sayar said: “Values are partly what we live for. They are what makes our life worth living. Values determine our purposes, and purposes determine the meaning of our life. There is also this problem in the person of the modern world: different values in different places… Different values in business life, different values at home, different values in family life, different values on the street… From time to time we can observe an inconsistency, and at times even a hypocrisy. Values being fragmented, being cruel and merciless in business life, is among the greatest problems. However, being a compassionate father in home life is a problem in itself.. Sometimes the values of business life completely dominate the values of family life. And ruthlessness can begin there too “he said.
Prof. Dr Sadettin Ökten: “Man must question the meaning and purpose of life”
Prof. Dr Sadettin Ökten, who is spoken of with praise for his work on Islamic civilization, gave participants important information about the Islamic world at MÜSİAD Visionary 21. Ökten said: “Man questions the meaning and purpose of his life. For questioning is in man’s nature. Such a being is man. He wants to define a meaning, an importance and a purpose for his life. Values emerge from here. Therefore, when man looks at his life and at himself, he questions the meaning of life and, questioning its purpose, says “why am I here”. The fundamental problem people have experienced throughout history is fate and death. Here, values give us the answer to these questions within a framework, within a system. We call this the vision of civilization. The values of every vision differ from one another. To give an example from the Islamic vision, in Islam it says “You were created to worship God. I created human beings and jinn only so that they may worship Me”. Such a discourse may not be valid in modernity. On the other hand, there are also people who believe in this discourse. They too have a certain number. They behave in the direction of this belief. Each human being is a separate value. It also expresses why we were created. Another vision of civilization says “this is life. What comes after death does not concern me. So you too should make use of this life during this life process.” That too is a vision of civilization,” he said.
Prof. Dr Sadettin Ökten: “There are two important instincts: the continuation of life and the continuation of the species”
Drawing attention to the fact that man lives subject to instinct, Ökten said: “When I explain this to students in class, I also speak of the other. When he compares himself with the other, he can understand himself much more easily. Because what we call the human being is in fact an existence or a creature. When we say creature here, we imply that there is a creator. When we say existence, we accept existence itself. The other is the other living beings. They live subject to instinct. And there are two basic instincts. One is the continuation of life, the other is the continuation of the species. Therefore, beings other than man have nothing to do in their lives apart from instinct. They live subject to it. But man is not like that. In man there is instinct, there is reason and there is emotion. There is memory that feeds and supports these. Beyond these there is conscience.” he said.
Prof. Dr Sadettin Ökten: “Christmas has now become a consumption instrument of capitalism in the West”
“The West too has values of its own. What is called meaning is in fact merely a concept. And you describe it by loading value onto this meaning. When you load meaning and importance onto it, it then becomes a principle in your life. You begin to act in order to make this value visible. This applies to our own selves, to our children and to our work as well. We live for our values. The values of Islam and the values of modernity are very different from one another. We too experience dual values in Türkiye. We are neither fully modernist nor, sociologically speaking, fully within Islamic civilization. Yet in business life we also try to preserve our own values. Slowly we are beginning to comprehend the difference in between. This is a transition process. Not only Türkiye, the whole world is experiencing this. The Western world began to modernize after abandoning its medieval attitude. We can cite as an example the Christmas celebrations approached in the folkloric sense reflected from that vision. Christmas is of course sacred for the West, but Christmases have become a consumption instrument of capitalism. There is a human type called modern man. This emerged together with the Renaissance. Evolving slowly, it carried out the industrial revolution. At the same time this human type is the humanist human being. When we look at the expansion of the concept of humanist as well, we see that it corresponds to a human type equivalent to God. This is also the basis of humanity. The word humanity also means self-sufficient, drawing one’s own destiny. Modern man can never reach satisfaction. We can see the finest example of this in the First and Second World Wars. They also drew in people who had no part in the wars. In fact wars continue under the name of “globalization”. What man needs is not in the field in which he is searching.”
Prof. Dr Sadettin Ökten: “While Islamic societies were unable to carry out the industrial revolution, today Türkiye has reached a point in technology that we could not even have imagined”
Prof. Dr Sadettin Ökten continued the speech he delivered at the summit as follows: “The system put forward by the prophets of Islam is a system based entirely on service. This system still continues, but the forms of this system are lacking. Islamic societies were unable to carry out the industrial revolution. The deficiency stems in part from this. Afterwards they also fell short in IT (information Technology). When we look at modernity, we see that it completed these. With this infrastructure, modernity entered a “self”-centred way of life. Passion is a very important phenomenon in this world. It gives man confidence. With this confidence, national borders were crossed and continents were discovered. Discovering countries was not enough and they went into space. When we look today, we see that he is unhappy. Because the possibilities of the world are limited, but man’s ambition is not limited. This has to be brought into balance. Yet only some see the imbalance here. Within this scope they turn themselves in another direction. When we look at our country, thoughts such as “we could not do it, we fell behind” prevail in terms of technology. There was even the thought that “we cannot even make a pin”. As an engineer who follows developments in the world very closely, today Türkiye has come to a point that I could not even have imagined. We have gained tremendous momentum in terms of infrastructure, software and hardware alike. All of this happens with the command “Be”. What matters is to work in the direction He shows, with reason, merit, intelligence and insight, without forgetting the owner of the command “Be”. The thought “let the country not develop” is completely wrong. Of course we will develop and grow. But we must also not forget that behind all of this is the command “Be”,” he said.
