Our Defense Industry and Qualified Production Economy

• 26.02.2020
• Archive

We are going through a period in which geopolitical tensions, terrorism and thus the security concerns are rapidly increasing across the world. In such a high tension period which has been increasing instead of decreasing for long years, the global defense concept and structure are questioned and intended to move to a new dimension. Along with this search for a safety, the defense industry has been one of the mostly-discussed subjects in the recent period across the world. Search for new models, new collaborations and new generation procurement strategies in this field are on the agenda of many countries.

As Istanbul Chamber of Industry, we try to follow this process closely. Since along with such a global conjuncture, the geo-strategical position that our country has further increases the importance of safety and defense matters for us. Accordingly, important steps are being taken in the recent period for the development of modern defense industry in Türkiye and the Turkish Armed Forces. The most important point for our country in this regard: The aim of “domestic and national production” in the defense industry.

As the Chamber, we continue to contribute and support this subject. We realized the second session of our event “Defense Industry Meetings” which we organized for the first time three years ago with the participation of Mustafa Varank, T.R Minister of Defense and Technology. T.R Numerous people from defense industry participated in the event that we organized in business collaboration with T.R Presidency Defense Industry Directorate and SAHA Istanbul Defense and Aerospace Cluster Association. We tried to lay the foundation of the participation of Istanbul industrial companies in the defense industry process with more than one thousands "bilateral meetings" held with 14 main companies within this scope. We believe that we will yield the fruits of these meetings in the following years.

We held the last month’s Assembly meeting with Mr. M. Rifat Hisarciklioğlu, the President of TOBB, our root institution. You can read the assessments and members’ opinions in the Assembly meeting that we held with the main agenda of “The Importance of Education, Quality and R&D in Transition to the Qualified Production Economy for Sustainable Growth” on the following pages. We specifically emphasized that the main element which brings welfare and creates employment is the production and therefore the industrial sector at the meeting. The qualified growth that we wanted to achieve is the share growth of advanced technological and high added value industrial products within the production and export. We discussed the steps that we can take in order to achieve this with a solution-oriented understanding.

Another titles of our journal during this month is the Reception where we bring the foreign representatives in Istanbul together with the Assembly Members as Istanbul Chamber of Industry... We informed the foreign mission about our country and the industry of Istanbul at the reception, for which the consultants and representatives of foreign missions of many countries participated and held in a warm atmosphere. We explained the recovering investment climate of our country by means of both macro indicators and ICI Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) and ICI Export Climate Index that we publish as ICI. We expressed that we were waiting for the contributions and supports of our foreign friends for direct international investments in Türkiye and we were ready to collaborate in this regard.

I hope everything will be well for the future of our industry...

With the success they are showing in each aspect of the life, their love and tolerance, women are bringing value to the life. I congratulate all women on March 8, International Women's Day.

Erdal Bahçıvan
Istanbul Chamber of Industry
Chairman