There is a serious inaction in economy and a significant recession in business world nationwide for the last 2-3 years. Consecutive national elections, Presidency election, general elections repeated twice left economy at the second and even third range in importance. Even though there were not a disturbing election policy compared top ast, the agenda of economy gave its seat to the policy again.
Within this context, negligence of the economy so long, insatibility caused by coalition discussions and political conflicts damaged the stability process acting for a long while and supporting economy for more than a decade. Production went throught a recession. Export which is the spinal cord of our economy also sticked to the 150 billion dollars scale. However; we were running motivated towards an export target for 2023 which is 500 billion dollars…
We are encountering the highest number of refugees of recent times
And furthermore, there are other problems in neighbouring countries in the meantime. Especially Syria problem and being exposed to the biggest refugee flow the world faced recently, showed us how important the foreign policy for national economy is. At this point, it is not the right thing for us to converse about a policy resolved by our state if it is correct or not. Our mission is to stand for it and produce, find new markets, provide employment and food if the resolution of the state is so. And we did so. However, we were also deeply affected by the reflection of social and political problems in our neighbours and other countries which have a significant place for our commerce such as Syria, Egypt and Iraq. And this situation keeps going on. The fact that Egypt closed our way to Africa and Arabian Peninsula , alternative ways were deactivated because of the problems in Syria affected both our export and our logistics towards those markets negatively.
Main agenda should be economy
Worst of all, those problems, attemps of some other forces intruding in our country to damage the social peace in our country and recent terror attacks which take place every day’s agenda reflected to our economy and current positive image of Turkey. Now, it is time to get back to our regular agenda by eluding from this spiral and the agenda exposed us by some others. We are supporting the uncompromising attitude of our state against every kind of terror and terrorist threatening our integrity and solidarity of our nation and state. On the other hand, we are also standing for the efforts of our state for the citizen rights of our citizens such as education, health, free movement in affected areas from terror. With other words, endless mercy and value, and uncompromising attitude against terror is a policy business world supports continuously. There are also good news about this pity issue. Out security forces are starting to bring the presence of the region back with an effort in the places where it is aimed to create an artificial Syria and to bring the subject up through terror attacks. Within this context, may our soldiers and security forces who lost their lives for peace in the country and existence of our state rest in peace. And may the veterans get well soon.
We can’t let terror to put our future in pledge
All we have to do from now on is to continue with our real agenda. Action Plan of our government with 3-6-12 months period, is an important step to continue our real agenda. Economy means the future of the country and the social peace. The more powerful economy is, the more socail peace increases. It’s doubltless fact that there are democratisation problems of the country. There is need for a new constitution. We have serious problems from justice to education. However, those are the problems which shall proceed with coordination and without neglecting economy. On one hand, we need to provide the political stability, peace and solidarity, on the other hand; we need to continuously focus on the reform areas by dealing with the medium-long term positive targets of Turkey we believe in from heart. We shall definitely not let torrorism detract us from the reform areas to reveal Turkey’s potential. Otherwise, we would feel sorry for not remunerating both our ancestors establishing Republic and the ones losing their lives fighting for our country and protecting our future.
Business world is always hopeful about future
I would like to make a contrast between those situations. I would like to say that those are not to make a hopless environment, but to relieve the succeed of our state and business world in resisting this troublesome environment. Here what I meant was success because this is a country in which there are terror attacks reflecting the fire around us on one hand; a country which resists against being dragged into this fire on the other hand; a counry which keeps its social peace and manages its economy in spite of everything.
At that point, we need to start noticing what our a thousand-year Republic brought us after all those succeedings and resistance and standing different from other countries around us. A nation they could never split and destroy despite every single kind of effort. A Turkish business world slaloming, making its own route and stil a part of global economy despite everything… All those things show us the dawn after night. We, as business world, are realistic people. A pessimistic person can actually never be an enterpreneur. We are very hopeful about the future of our country. That’s because we know our citizens and we know the power of the values provided us by Republic. Actually, those times should have been the ones we introvert by ourselves.We need to start observing other countries in trouble, and what their trouble is like and start acting to prevent our nation get into those troubles and if we were already in, we should start fixing before other forces interfere. This is not a compromise, but a sign of power. For instance; preparing a more democratical Constitution with common sense, establishing a system enabling objectivity in law, making the required reforms in education preparing us to 21th century, realizing structural reforms in economy, broadening freedoms, and focusing on education etc. Many other subjects could also be added. Those reforms, steps to broaden individual freedoms and perform the regulations and changes to make us honorable citizens of Republic no matter what our ethnicity and religion is are the pillars to keep us alive against all future challenges. We, as Mersin Chamber of Commerce and Industry, as business world of Mersin, are going to keep following those values.