Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey

- Call to digitalize

TOBB President Rifat Hisarcıklıoğlu met with members of the TOBB Women Entrepreneurs High Council through video conferencing. TOBB President Rifat Hisarcıklıoğlu thanked all women entrepreneurs for their work and wished Nurten Öztürk success in her new term efforts.  Hisarcıklıoğlu, who wants to bring digitalization to the agenda of the Women Entrepreneur Council, said, “I would like to thank our Council Members and previous Board Presidents Aynur Bektas, Evrim Aras and Zeynep Erkunt Armağan for their great efforts in our TOBB Women Entrepreneurs Council. Our women entrepreneurs are raising the bar for success every day. They are undertaking very successful national and local projects. We support it, and we will continue to do so. The way for Turkey's development is through a further increase in our women entrepreneurs. Our 7,000 Women Entrepreneurs Council members organized in 81 provinces are working in the field to raise awareness in this field.  With training, activities and promotion allotments of our Women Entrepreneur Council, the number of women entrepreneurs has reached 142,000.”

- New projects are on the agenda

Nurten Öztürk, elected Chairwoman of the TOBB Women Entrepreneurs Council, said, “When accepting this honorable duty as a country-loving businesswoman, all I think about is my belief in such a valuable, respectable, cumulative workforce and the excitement for what we can do for our country together. In this honorable task process given to me, my goal will be to carry out and develop existing projects in the healthiest way and to spread them to the general public, first of all to produce projects in the areas of cleanliness, hygiene, health that will minimize the negative effects of the pandemic, to support the projects that are depleted but for our country and to make quicker to reach the goal, to change and develop the country and the people of the country, to produce and implement projects that respect nature, respect for the homeland, respect for life.”

Cevahir Han Chairman Cevahir Asuman Yazmacı, Garanti BBVA Deputy General Manager Işıl Akdemir Evlioğlu and Cherry Vallet Food General Manager Melisa Tokgöz Mutlu continue to be Vice Chairs of TOBB Women Entrepreneurs Council.

- TOBB Women Entrepreneurs Council has established a wide network with 7,000 members

The TOBB Board of Women Entrepreneurs was established by the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey (TOBB) in 2007 to set policy and lead the development of entrepreneurial culture in order to develop and further equip the potential of female entrepreneurs.

The TOBB Women Entrepreneurs Council, which carries out its activities within the Chambers and Exchanges in coordination with TOBB, is the largest entrepreneurial women's network in the country with 7,000 members. Council members consist of businesswomen who are leaders in their fields, professional managers, academicians doing academic work on entrepreneurship, and non-governmental organization directors operating on a regional or national scale in this field, as well as representatives of public institutions and organizations that support entrepreneurship. The TOBB Women Entrepreneurs Council has an executive board of 27 people.

- Nurten Öztürk, Chairwoman of TOBB Women Entrepreneurs Council

Nurten Öztürk was born in Mengen in 1949 and completed primary and secondary school in Mengen. In 1971, she graduated from Sinop Girls Teacher School, Çapa High Teacher School and Faculty of Science Zoology-Botany Department and started her role as a Biology teacher at Aksehir Teacher School. In the same year, she married her school friend Fikret Öztürk. She prioritized laboratory work in all the schools she served in. After leaving teaching in 1984, she started working for Öztürkler Petrol Ltd., a family-owned company founded in 1980. Together with her spouse Fikret Öztürk, she came to Istanbul in 1992 and founded OPET Petroleum LLC, Turkey's first domestic fuel company. Nurten Öztürk has been active in every part of the company since its establishment. She is the idea leader and manager of OPET's Clean Toilet Campaign, Green Road Project, Exemplary Village Project, Respect for History Project and Traffic Detectives project.