Ankara Metropolitan Municipality Mayor Mansur Yavaş, Yenimahalle Municipality Mayor Fethi Yaşar, OSTİM Board Chairman Orhan Aydın, OSTİM Vice Chairman Sıtkı Öztuna and Board Members, OSTİM Technical University Rector Prof. Dr. Murat Yülek, chairmen of the boards of directors of OSTİM cooperatives, chairmen of the boards of directors of OSTİM clusters, OSTİM Technopark managers, industrialists, NGO representatives and academics were guests at the consultation meeting.
Requests from Organized Industrial Zones are being collected
Mayor Yavaş, at a meeting held in the OSTİM Organized Industrial Zone Directorate Conference Hall, explained the Ankara Metropolitan Municipality's work, its perspective on industry, and the services it provides, answered questions, and listened to requests and suggestions. Ankara Metropolitan Mayor Mansur Yavaş stated, “When you see and hear things firsthand, it's better to understand certain things and prioritize accordingly. We held the first ever tenders in Turkey that were open and broadcast live. Protocols had been signed with Organized Industrial Zones before us, and we have continued to do so. We contribute to the asphalt paving of all Organized Industrial Zones. When the asphalt paving season begins, we write to our Organized Industrial Zones, and adjust our budget according to their requests. We have laid a total of 74,000 tons of asphalt in OSTİM.”
The stronger the industry becomes, the more it will contribute to the development of Ankara and Turkey, as well as benefiting us in terms of employment. We have established our career center; it has the resumes of 350,000 people. If you cooperate with our career center, we can direct you to the personnel you need. We have opened two IT centers, and a third will be opened. By signing a protocol with Bilkent University, we are opening Turkey's first local government technopark. All of these will add richness to Ankara.”
Yavaş, responding to a question about Ankara Metropolitan Municipality's procurement processes, said, "We would gladly prefer local manufacturers."
“We aimed to make OSTİM a technology hub”
Orhan Aydın, Chairman of the Board of Directors of OSTİM, who gave the opening speech of the meeting, said: “OSTİM is Ankara's oldest industrial establishment. It has guided the industrial transformation in Ankara and served as an incubator. Nearly 75% of the 12 industrial zones formed in Ankara consist of industrialists who grew up in OSTİM. This shows that OSTİM is a fruitful place. We aimed to make our region a technology hub. We envisioned a place similar to Silicon Valley in America. We see this place as Silicon Valley in our dreams. The only thing missing here was a university. We are sponsoring 7 sectoral clusters. To increase the competitiveness of our companies, we are trying to do what is known and applied all over the world, what countries have done while developing. Companies can compete individually, but that is not enough; cooperation, synergy, and joint competition are necessary. We are working hard on how we can compete in cooperation, not destructive competition. In this sense, we are carrying out projects with the Ministry of Trade within the scope of UR-GE projects to address the problems of our companies and their internationalization.”
Aydın pointed out that, thanks to the efforts of the ARUS Cluster, 200 parts of the Ankara Metro were localized. Orhan Aydın stated: “The 51% local content requirement in the Ankara Metro tender caused a very important paradigm shift. Our subsequent minister increased this requirement to 60%. The Turkish industry has now formed a team capable of producing everything from end-to-end light metro, metro vehicles, and high-speed trains within Turkey.”
“We are able to find solutions to all our requests from our municipality.”
Aydın thanked the Ankara Metropolitan Municipality for its services, saying, “After your interest and closeness to the industry, I believe we can do great things together and solve our problems by talking. As OSTİM, we can find a point of contact and a solution for all our requests from the Municipality. We thank your team very much. I want to express our satisfaction.”
During his visits in OSTİM, Yavaş travelled on a 100% electric, domestically produced metrobus vehicle manufactured by Bozankaya A.Ş., a member of the Anatolian Rail Transportation Systems Cluster (ARUS). He also visited Ostim Technopark companies and received information about their work.
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