43rd General Assembly of TÜSİAD was held on January 17th, 2013 at the Four Season Bosphorus, in Istanbul. The Assembly was opened with the address of Mr. Erkut Yücaoğlu, President of the High Advisory Council of TÜSİAD.
In his address, Mr. Erkut Yücaoğlu said that Turkey has to assume a serious, consensus creating profile, active in problem solving, but detached from the hot conflicts. He also emphasized the importance of structural reforms to increase value added and spoke as follows: “We are in a fortunate time to improve our competitiveness. The strong commitments in monetary and fiscal policies persist. We are entering a period of increasing privatizations revenues. We expect that these revenues will not be just another source for the budget, but will be allocated to education, R&D and productivity enhancing infrastructure projects and also will be used to support the competitiveness of our industry.”
In her final speech as the President of Board of Director of TÜSİAD, Ms. Ümit Boyner expressed her satisfaction in handing over the mission to very competent hands. Ms. Boyner assessed also the recent development about the Kurdish problem as follows: “Arriving at the conclusion of the solution to a problem corroding our social fabric warms my heart. We can always think in our own way about the methods. We may have different reasons to look for a solution. Nevertheless, almost every social segment asks for a solution now. Everybody says that now is the time of communicating by means of words, not arms. All of us – whoever we are – whatever identities we adopt – we are the children of this land. We deserve peace and solution for ourselves and for our children."