Excerpts from the speech of Hon. Ekrem Demirtas President of Izmir Chamber of Commerce.
We are pleased to host FICAC luncheon in honour of President Abdullah Gul.
Welcome to Izmir.
I want to thank Esteemed president of FICAC Arnold Foote, and my friend Honorary Consul of Jamaika in Turkey, Aykut Eken.
Esteemed guests,
As you know, we have just get over a big competition.
Our city was one of the candidates of EXPO 2015.
Milano is the winner for this competition.
Of Course we are sorry because we were really close to the target.
Behind the election that held on 31st March, we have 16 years effort.
Since it is an election, there has to be a winner and a loser.
But we think that we gained a lot in this process of competition.
For the first time in its history Izmir, came to the world arena.
Esteemed Guests, The most important is that Izmir learned to play fort he high stakes.
From now on Izmir can’t reduce its target.
Our target was to make Izmir a brand city.
Our target is to be a world city.
In this point we request your support.
You are very important people.
For this reason, i want to share my opinion to organize world turkish Honorary Consuls Meeting in Izmir in 2009.
Esteemed guests, the candidacy of EXPO 2015 taught us the importance of Honorary Consuls again.
They did efficient work.
In this process i learned how important is the assignment of being honorary consul.
We have only 75 embassies among the 152 member countries of BIE.
You had great contributions on the countries that we don’t have embassies.
I want to express my deepest thanks to the all honorary consuls fort he support that they gave us.
Of course our diplomatic represantatives and embassies are important.
But most of you are members of business worldyou have comercial experience.
We talked about it with Arnold Foote on Wednesday.
The trade will develop by you, as you have both commercial and diplomatic mission.
According to EU norms, in economic context, Izmir is 99th biggest city all over the world.
I hope you have good time in ?zmir.
Best Regards.
