Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey

At the reception, TOBB President Hisarcıklıoğlu wished success for new term efforts and conveyed his good wishes.

Ayhan Zeytinoğlu, in his statement after the visit, gave the following views: “Our elections started on the 3^rd of November and ended on the 10^th. In fact, although we have little post-pandemic working process, we have made a very democratic and beautiful election at a certain level. First, we elected our council members. We then elected both the administration and our delegates. Due to the increase in the minimum wage, the number of our delegates decreased from 16 to 14. Despite this, we had a good election. There has been a change of close to 30 percent in our council members. Some of our friends asked forgiveness for their absence. They encouraged us to elect new friends. We had a very positive, level-headed choice. This is my fourth term. I am really proud to be in this community.

Thanks to our President, he hosted us in his office today. Today, apart from our 14 delegates, our board members and 23 friends visited them. We gave information about our assembly. We explained our election process. As you know, Kocaeli is one of the regions where Turkey's most important manufacturing sector is located. It is a province which hosts 13 percent of the manufacturing industry in Türkiye and makes 18-19 percent of exports. I presented our council members to him. We have also increased the number of women council members from 3 to 6. He told us that they wanted to see our female friends in the board of directors and rightly so.I hope that in the coming terms, we or our friends who will come after us will succeed in this. Our president told us how democratic TOBB is and how effectively and democratically the elections were held. Then he told our council members that I had worked closely with him during the pandemic. He very graciously praised us a little too much. Then he talked about the work they had done on the problems in the country. We left having been greatly impressed.

I hope that together with our President, we will continue with our President for another 4 years, supporting him with 14 of my friends. In our administration, there is extraordinary love and respect for our President. I congratulate him here for deserving this very much.”