Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey

In addition to TOBB President Hisarcıklıoğlu, Konya Governor Vahdettin Özkan, Deputy Minister of Industry and Technology Hasan Büyükdede, Konya Metropolitan Municipality Mayor Uğur İbrahim Altay, TSE President Mahmut Sami Şahin, Konya Chamber of Commerce Chairman and TOBB Vice Chairman Selçuk Öztürk attended the OSEG 2022 Conference Award Ceremony hosted by Konya Chamber of Industry President Memiş Kütükçü, MPs and numerous industry representatives attended. TOBB President Hisarcıklıoğlu congratulated the industrialists who deserved to receive awards in his speech and wished them continued success.

Stating that he is proud of the Konya Chamber of Industry, which started one of the first clusters of Türkiye in the automotive supplier industry and implemented the first Ur-Ge Project of the sector, Hisarcıklıoğlu said, “I wholeheartedly congratulate President Memiş Kütükçü, his management, assembly, secretary general and colleagues. Beyond just doing a sectoral endeavor, you are also waging a national effort. Because in the age we are in, the way to be a strong country is to be strong in science, industry and technology.” Hisarcıklıoğlu stated that all of the countries that are influential in the world today are the countries that have come to the fore in this field, and that everyone now understands the value of the manufacturing industry.

- We have a self-confident business culture

The TOBB President, noting that we tripped ourselves up in terms of both domestic automobiles and domestic airplanes at the time, said: “Fortunately, today we have more conscious and more confident managers in both the public and private sectors. That old mentality that said we can't do this has been replaced by a culture of doing business that is confident and that says we can do it, that we can produce even better. The result of this is evident both in Konya and in Türkiye. Automotive has become Türkiye's number one exporter sector. Export champions came out of the automotive sector. Our automotive industry has started to make a very large part of its exports to Europe. We have become the most important automotive supplier in Europe. This also shows the high quality production of our sector. We also aim for Türkiye, which has become a production base in the automotive sector, to become a technology and design base. We started Türkiye's Automobile project TOGG with this vision. The automotive industry is rapidly transforming into a mobility ecosystem, changing the rules of the game. The transformation that took place in the phone in the past is happening in automotive today, cars are turning into a new generation smart device. As the automotive industry changed its shell, we saw a new window of opportunity open for us. In the 1960s, we missed this opportunity and could not protect the “Devrim” car. We had tried and talked a lot so far, but we had not succeeded. We aimed for a car whose brand is ours, whose license and patent are ours, whose design is ours. We aimed to reverse the brain drain and increase our human capital. Praise be to Allah, after 5 years of intensive work, we have come to the conclusion. On October 29, we will officially open our production base in Gemlik and we will be ready for mass production. As of March next year, our vehicles will be on the roads. We will start exporting 1.5 years from now. TOGG SUV, which will be sold with two different range options, 300 and 500 kilometers, will offer 200 and 400 horsepower. Its battery will be charged in 25 minutes with fast charging. We have also established a company to strengthen the charging infrastructure. We have started work to install 1,500 fast charging stations across the country.”