Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey

TOBB President M. Rifat Hisarcıklıoğlu, in his speech at the consulate, touching on the importance unity and solidarity, saying: “The ruling party, the opposition and the business world are with you with all of their institutions and establishments. Draw a lesson from this. I saw this when I visited France in 2006. Lenin has an apt quote: ‘Disorganized masses are doomed to be led by organized groups.’”

Unfortunately, getting organized is something we as a people don’t seem to be able to do well. There are 500,000 Armenian people living here and they are able to affect change. There are hundreds of thousands of Turks here but for some reason we don’t seem to get along. Everyone is an island unto themselves. Divided like that, anything could happen to us.

Our culture states that there is grace and prosperity in unity, anguish in dissent. If you wish to see grace and prosperity, you must live here with your head held high, unite. We must love each other with our imperfections. As long as we push each other away we will be getting hit for it. This can’t happen with last minute interventions. You are the ones living here and you need to be organized here.

The USA has a population of 300 million. There are 6.2 million Jews in that population and every newly elected president sends their first salutation to Israel. Why? Because they’re organized. We are like this everywhere, we don’t like each other. Then there is nothing to do. The only flawless thing is Allah. You must love me with my imperfections. Only then can we have a say here. We are unable to decide what to do when confronted with many conflicting establishments and institutions.”

- TÜSİAD President Boyner

TÜSİAD President Ümit Boyner stated that bills like this surface during every election period and that they as the business world and civil society organizations put forth their reaction to share the knowledge of the consequences of these issues brought up in the hopes of more votes could have with the French business world.

- Grand National Assembly Foreign Affairs Delegation President Bozkır

The Grand National Assembly Foreign Affairs Delegation President Volkan Bozkır talked in his speech about the deteriorating relations between Turkey and France as well as the trade volume and the needlessness, unfairness and the bad timing of the bill.

- Grand National Assembly Foreign Affairs Delegation Member Koç

Grand National Assembly Foreign Affairs Delegation Member Haluk Koç also called for unity, stating that the ruling and opposition parties are charged with protecting the interests of Turkey.

After the speeches, the president of a foundation of an umbrella organization in France, Hikmet Türk stated that upon agreeing with 80 other Turkish foundations, they have agreed to congregate about 20,000 people in front of the French Parliament on the morning of the 22nd of December.
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