Speaking at the 4th General Assembly of MARİFED on Saturday, Yazıcı noted that in the greater part of the decade, Turkey not only grew substantially, but also became one of the most attractive countries for investment. He added that according to predictions by several international economic organizations, Turkey will be one of the fastest growing nations in 2010.At the assembly, Ahmet Ciğer was re-elected as president of MARİFED. Speaking about his re-election, he noted, “We have much more work to do.” He pointed out that the members of the federation, who come from 11 provinces in the Marmara region and 30 business organizations, have traveled more than 200 times -- and enough distance to go around the world 10 times -- in order to create export opportunities for Turkey. “Recently, we’ve been on trade missions to Sudan, Morocco and Egypt and have laid the foundations for Turkish businessmen in those markets,” said Ciğer.
Yazıcı, who was put in charge of resolving the issues of workers dismissed from the privatized factories of the state-owned tobacco and alcohol monopoly Tekel by the Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek, said they had not left the workers out in the open as the issue has been portrayed and that there were groups among the protestors in Ankara that were provoking anti-government sentiments. “We raised the amount of temporary work that they could take advantage of from 10 to 11 months, raised the duration of their annual leave from 10 days to 22 days, raised their wages and continue to pay their social security premiums, but they still haven’t accepted this. If we hadn’t started the negotiations again, we were going to start paying their severance pay at the end of this month, totaling TL 20,000 to TL 80,000 per person.”
Turkish Confederation of Businessmen and Industrialists (TUSKON) President Rızanur Meral, also speaking at the event, stated that MARİFED was the largest of TUSKON’s sister organizations and the most active. He added that the projects undertaken between the two organizations helped alleviate the effects of the economic crisis and revive exports.
