In affirmation of the enduring bonds and growing importance of the U.S. Turkey relationship, the American Turkish Council convened its 32nd Annual  Conference on U.S.-Turkish Relations in Washington, on June 2-5. The conference provided attendees with high-profile and dynamic speakers, stimulating panel discussions, and numerous networking opportunities from which to build partnerships. For those unable to attend, this recaps the Conference events of last week.


The activities began with an elegant welcoming reception at the Residence of the Turkish Ambassador.  His Excellency Ambassador Namik Tan and wife, Fugen, graciously opened their beautiful home to Conference attandees and guests.  Delicious Turkish food, refreshing drinks and an atmosphere of informal conversation and networking got the Conference off on the right note.


Monday, June 3


The Opening Plenary Monday morning featured welcoming remarks by ATC Chairman Amb. Richard Armitage, and TAIK Chairman Haluk Dinçer followed by the Keynote address of Steven F. Gaffney, Chairman of the Board of DynCorp International.  Undersecretary of Defense Industries, The Honorable Murad Bayar, was presented the Defense Industry Award.






Following the opening ceremony, the conference proceeded with an examination of Turkey’s “Political Landscape,” moderated by Terence Smith of the PBS Newshour.  The panelists, Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post; Prof. Kemal Kirisci of Brookings Institution; and The Honorable Robert I. Wexler of the Daniel Abraham Center of ME Peace, discussed the implications of the recent protests in Taksim Gezi Park, the Kurdish peace initiative, the regional concerns from the Syrian Civil War, relations with Israel and concern over Iran’s nuclear development program.


A distinguishing feature of ATC Conferences is the working-group sessions.  Two feature panels Monday morning included the Defense & Security Affairs working group and an EU session addressing the trade implications for Turkey, of the Transatlantic Trade Agreement negotiation process between the US and EU. Muharrem Dortkasli and Col. (Ret.) Jerry Kafka, Chairmen of ATC’s Defense and Security Committee, moderated the discussion on National Security policy with LTG Alpaslan Erdogan, Chief of Plans and Principles of the Turkish General Staff, and LTG Frederick Hodges, Commander of LANDCOM as panelists.  The EU Session was moderated by Tulu Gumustekin, a member of the ATC Board of Directors and included, H.E. Ambassador Haluk llicak Under Secretary for the Ministry of EU Affairs; Anil Menon of Cisco; Joshua Walker of the Council on Foreign Relations, and H.E. United Kingdom Ambassador to the United States Sir Peter Wesmacott.  


Monday’s Lunch keynote speaker was H. E. Namik Tan, Turkey’s Ambassador to the United States.  Following the lunch, the afternoon’s program included a discussion on opportunities for collaboration between Turkey and the U.S. in infrastructure development within third countries. The panel was lead by Nizamettin Derbil, Co-Chair of the ATC’s Energy and Infrastructure Committee. Discussants in the sessions included, Raymond Ellis, Vice President of Global Business Development at the Export-Import Bank of the United States; Dr. Mahesh Gandhi, President of AFII Ventures; Susan Florian, Senior Vice President of Parson; Emin Sazak, Chairman and CEO of Yuksel Construction and President of the Turkish Contractors Association; Goktug Seckiner, Assistant General Manager of Dogus Construction, and Bruce Bitner, Bechtel Project Manager, Gabon.

The Agribusiness sessions on Food and Health included distinguished speakers Dr. Rhona Applebaum, Vice President and Chief Scientific and Regulatory officer of the Coca-Cola Company; Dr. John Fletcher, Senior DIrector for Nutrition, Research and Development at PepsiCo; and Dr. James M. Rippe, Founder of Rippe Lifestyle Institute. A Special Service Award was presented to Ronald L. Whitehead, President of Whitehead Group.  Rint Akyuz, Chair of TAIK Agribusiness Committee and Joseph Lukitsch, Chairmen of ATC’s Agribusiness and Food Industries Committee moderated the two Agriculture sessions.

A second Defense & Security Affairs discussion took place on promoting Turkish-American Defense Industries through cooperation and partnership. President and CEO of ATC Amb. James Holmes moderated and the speakers were Murad Bayar, Under Secretary for Defense Industries, and Frank Kendall, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics at the Department of Defense.   A Special Defense Award was presented to COL. (Ret) Preston Hughes.  

The Banking and Finance Panel presentations focused on  “ Global Competitiveness of Turkey and Public Private Partnerships” and featured the Executive Director of JP Morgan-Turkey Koray Arikan; Fernando Jaime of MetLife; Dr. Kemal Mamak of Herguner, Bilgen & Ozeke and Canan Ozsoy of GE Turkey.   

The last panel of Monday focused on investment potentials in Turkey’s education sector and opportunities for expansion. The discussion was moderated by Dr. Burak Kuntay, Chairman of the ATC’s Education Committee and included Carolyn Aker of the Cambridge Institute of International Education; Nuri Colakoglu President of Dogan Media International; Dr. Bahar Akinguc Gunver of Kultur University; Andrew Levi of Cisco; and Enver Yucel, the Founder of Bahcesehir University.


The first day’s events culminated with a receptionand dinner at which The Honorable Jose W. Fernandez, Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs was the keynote speaker. A special award was presented to Emin Sazak, Chairman and CEO of Yuksel Construction.


Tuesday, June 4

Tuesday activities began with the Golden Horn Members breakfast which featured The Honorable Michael Rogers (R-8th MI), Chairman of the House of Representatives’ Permanent, Select Committee on Intelligence. In concise but warm remarks, Chairman Rogers affirmed his support for Turkey and the US-Turkey relationship and emphasized the country’s critical regional importance and role within Syria’s ongoing Civil War. Rep. Rogers was presented with the Distinguished Leadership Award while Agah Ugur of Borusan Holding was presented with the Commercial Leadership Award.

Following the breakfast, a plenary session on Turkish infrastructure “Mega Projects for 2023” was held. The President of Investment Support and Promotion Agency of Turkey, Ilker Ayci, provided a Keynote address followed by a breif film of several infrastructure “mega-projects.”  A panel discussion of the numerous infrastructure opportunities included Dr. Cevdet Akcay, Chief Economist of Yapi Kredi Bank; Ebru Ozdemir Kislali of Limak Investments; and Mahmut Unlu of Unlu and Co.  Hasan Pehlivan, Principle Advisor of ISPAT, was the moderator.


The two morning breakfast sessions were on Agribusiness and Energy.  The panelists on the Agribusiness Trade Session were Tarkan Gurkan of PepsiCo; Sadrettin Karahocagil, President of GAP Regional Development Administration; Rachel Nelson, Senior Trade Advisor, US Department of Agriculture, and Eric Trachtenberg of McLarty Associates. The Energy panel focused on Turkey’s role as a regional energy hub and its growing domestic demand for hydrocarbons. The discussion was lead by Amb. (Ret.) Richard Kauzlarich of George Mason University and the panelists were, Tulu Gumustekin of CPS; Michael Knights of the Washington Institute; Dr. Denise Natali of The National Defense University, and Surreya Yucel Ozden, Chief Advisor to the Board of GAMA.

The Tuesday luncheon featured speaker was Agah Ugur CEO of Borusan Holding.  Amb (Ret.) Esther Coopersmith was presented with a Cultural Award while AMGEN was given the Commercial Leadership Award received by Paul Neureiter.


Tuesday’s afternoon sessions included two Defense & Security sessions. The first was on the  industrial perspective on working together in new and emerging markets and was moderated by Yilmaz Guldogan of Turkish Aerospace Industries.  The featured panelists were President of Alp Aviation, Tuncer Alpata; Haluk Balucu of FNSS; Chris King of BAE; Douglas Parks of Dow Chemical, and Stephen O’Bryan of Lockheed Martin. The second defense discussion dealth with the emerging threats in Cyber Security. The panel was moderated by Cem Ugur of ESEN System Integration and included as panelists  Adam Golodner of CISCO; Alparslan Kuloglu of Havelsan; Christopher Painter, Coordinator for Cyber Issues from the U.S. Department of State, and Tahsin Turkoz of TUBITAK and BILGEM.

In the late afternoon a roundtable panel on Culture & Tourism convened. The session was moderated by Ceylan Pirinccioglu of VIP Turizm and featured Mehmet Bahattin Atci, Provincial Governor of Milas; Hamdi Guvenc of ATM Airport-Dalaman; Bryan Lewis of Civitas Advisors; travel writer and author Patricia Schultz; Curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Department of Greek and Roman Art Christopher Lightfoot; and Leslie Zack, Director for Meetings of the International and American Association for Dental Research.    


The conference closing Reception and Dinner was marked by two major keynote speakers. Introduced by Thomas Kennedy, Executive Vice President of Raytheon,  The Honorable Joseph R. Biden Vice President of the United States and H.E. Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan addressed the conference attendees.


The VIce President reaffirmed the United States unshakable relations with Turkey. Referring to the protesters then in the streets of Turkey, he said “Turkey’s future belongs to the people of Turkey and no one else.  But the United States does not pretend to be indifferent to the outcome because we firmly believe that countries with open societies, political systems and economies, democratic institutions and a firm commitment to universal human rights, these are the countries that will thrive and be the most powerful countries in the 21st century.”

He went on to add that  despite the 75 percent increase in trade, now valued at $ 20 billion, between Turkey and the United States since  launching a framework for strategic and economic commercial cooperation in 2009, “the potential to do more is so vast; more to improve the business climate and attract investment, more to realize the immense opportunities in the areas of light tech, pharmaceuticals and energy; and more to help bright Turkish students access American universities.” Furthermore he declared that the U.S. will “keep Turkey informed of the progress of the U.S. trade talks with the EU, so that when the time is right we'll be able to take our trade relationship with Turkey to the next step.”


Following VP Biden’s remarks, Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan used his speech to focus on the history of cooperation between Turkey and the United States as well as Turkey’s continued transformation into a world class democracy and economy.

“Turkey has been going through a very important transformation process over the last ten years. This was a political transformation, this was a social transformation, this was also an economic transformation. Our political transformation was demonstrated in a better functioning democratic system, compared to ten years ago, better practices for freedoms, human rights being better respected and rule of law being better and better observed in the country. We have done a lot, but on the other hand we know that there is a lot remaining to be done.”

Deputy Prime Minister Babacan also spoke of promising trends within the Turkish economy citing that  “in the last three years our growth rate was 6.7% on average. Meanwhile debt-to-GDP ratio decreased from 46% to 36% of GDP. There is now a big discussion in the world about whether countries should target austerity or growth. We are doing both. We are growing with austerity. 4.8 million additional jobs have been created since the 2009 crisis...we increased our per-capita GDP from $3,500 dollars to $10,500 dollars, which corresponds to $17,000 when PPP adjusted per-capita income...We increased our exports from 36 billion dollars to 153 billion dollars over the last ten years and targeting... $500 billion dollars of exports” by 2023.

Following the speeches, the Distinguished Citizen Award was presented to Vice President Biden while Deputy Prime Minister Babacan received the Distinguished Leadership Award.

The final program for the conference took place at the Defense Breakfast on Wednesday morning. With an introduction by Ed O’Donnell, Vice President at Pratt & Whitney, speeches were delivered by Elana Broitman, Principal Deputy to the DAS/D for Manufacturing and Industrial Policy and The Honorable Sedat Guldogan, Deputy Under Secretary for Defense Industries at the Ministry of National Defense. The breakfast was concluded with closing remarks from Committee Chairs, Muharrem Dortkasli and Jerry Kafka.

As in the past, the 2013 Annual Conference was made possible by the financial support of our loyal corporate sponsors; Raytheon, AES, Sikorsky, Pratt & Whitney, Koc Holding, Turkish Airlines, Lockheed Martin, PEPSICO, DEIK, the Turkish Armed Forces Foundation, ISPAT, Bankpozitif, CISCO, BAE Systems, GE, Boeing, along with the inkind contributions from Link Translations, The Coca-Cola Company, Godiva and Savunma VE Havacilik. We thank them for their generosity and commitment to the Turkey-U.S. relationship. Last but not least, we applaud and thank the dedicated volunteers and interns who gave their time and energy, which was integral for the important success of the conference.   

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