History

TURKONFED History

 

The Industry and Business Association (SİAD) movement, which started with the search of the SİADs in different corners of the country to join forces in the second half of the 1990s, held its first summit on October 17, 1997 in Istanbul, hosted by TÜSİAD. Participating SIADs defined their aim at this summit as “to make the voice of industrialists and businesspeople spread across the country to be heard to the public, parliament and governments, and to produce projects that will contribute to national and regional development”.

For the first three years, SİADs, trying to coordinate only around a “Planning Committee” that organized the summits, named this union at the 4th SİAD Summit held in Şanlıurfa on November 17, 2000. : Turkey SİAD Platform.

The platform formed the network of relations, solidarity and cooperation ground of independent businesspeople's associations operating in line with the same principles and goals, not shaped according to political distinctions, and working actively in their own regions. At the same summit, important steps were taken towards institutionalization with the "Turkish SİAD Platform Working Principles" signed by all participating associations and the "Executive Committee" elected.

In the same year, various industry associations came together and formed a "Sectoral Associations Platform". The sector associations, which had previously met in the studies carried out to demonstrate the competitiveness of the sectors, this time formed a shared “Executive Committee” and undersigned the principles of shared work.

In this process, sectoral associations performed competitiveness analyses in preparation for the EU process in addition to their activities in their own fields. Regional associations, on the other hand, closely followed the problems of their regions and followed the economic, political and social reforms Turkey needed. These studies were carried out with annual summits and boards of chairperson meeting at least three times a year.

Less than two years after these institutionalization moves, the changes in the legislation concerning non-governmental organizations initiated a new search. This search could be defined as the establishment of functional and strong regional and sectoral federations that will best understand the existing structure and have the potential to expand, and these federations’ undertaking the establishment of a confederation that would be the umbrella organization of the business world. The task of carrying out the organizational work was assigned to the Aegean Industry and Business Association (ESİAD) by the Turkish SİAD Platform.

In 2002, platform member SİADs were asked their views on meeting in a higher organization through a questionnaire and international examples were examined. Problems that may arise were discussed by conducting various workshops. Afterwards, organizational principles were determined, regions were created, organizational models to reconcile different structures were discussed, and sample bylaws were prepared.

After the necessary by-law changes were made so that associations could come together and establish higher organizations, federations started to be formed. After the completion of the establishment of six federations, the confederation works have been accelerated.

On November 4, 2004, the Enterprise and Business Confederation was established. The founding members of the confederation were BASİFED, DASİFED, DOGÜNSİFED, İÇASİFED, MAKSİFED and SEDEFED. BASİFED President Enis Özsaruhan was appointed as the President of the Enterprise and Business Confederation, headquartered in Istanbul.

On April 14, 2005, the confederation officially took the name “Turkish” and started to be known as “Turkish Enterprise and Business Confederation” or, for short, TÜRKONFED.