President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan attended the “33rd General Assembly and Awards Ceremony of TİM Export Champions” at Haliç Congress Center.
Highlights from President Erdoğan's statements:
Dear members of our Turkish Exporters Assembly, valued guests, ladies and gentlemen, I greet you with my most sincere feelings, respect and affection. I hope that the 33rd General Assembly of our Turkish Exporters Assembly will be beneficial for our country, our economy and our exporters. I would like to congratulate our companies who are recognized as export champions and our business people who are leaders in their industries.
Only those who need to worry about this will know how every penny of the numbers we are about to mention was earned and what difficult battles were fought. As your brother who comes from the trade, you know that these achievements are not easy to achieve; I know very well that it requires perseverance, patience, effort, skill and determination.
“Türkiye’s success rate increasing year by year is obvious”
Especially today, exporting is more than just an activity that consists of buying goods and selling them elsewhere. You carry the burden of our country, sometimes as an exporter, sometimes as an honorary ambassador, and sometimes as a sergeant fighting to overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of Türkiye. On this occasion, I would like to thank the President of TİM, the members of the Board of Directors and all my brothers who have served under the umbrella of TİM so far. I have always stood by our exporters, whom I see as my companions, friends in business and destiny, and I will continue to be by your side from now on.
The aim of the Turkish Exporters Assembly, which brings together 27 sectors, 61 exporters associations and more than 140,000 exporters in our country, is to achieve Turkey's foreign trade surplus goal. From the most remote corners of the world to the most competitive markets, every product with a Turkish stamp reflects the hard work, dynamism and global vision of this vast family.
Türkiye's success rate increasing year by year is obvious. Despite the various difficulties that Türkiye faces, anyone who follows the world and has an open mind and eyes can see where she comes from. In the shadow of cyclical tensions, we recorded 3.6 percent growth in 2025 and 2.5 percent growth in the first quarter of 2026, continuing our uninterrupted growth performance over the past 23 quarters.
“Our exports of goods and services have broken the record in the history of our republic”
Our export successes, which we achieved with the motto of not leaving a single customs gate on the world markets where our flag does not fly, have now become our national motivation. In 2025, our exports of goods and services broke the record in the history of our Republic at $395.9 billion. Our merchandise exports, which were only $36 billion in 2002, increased to $273.3 billion by 2025.
Our services exports rose from $14 billion in 2002 to $122.6 billion last year. Our share of global goods exports rose from 55 per thousand to 1.04 percent and our share of service exports rose from 89 per thousand to 1.28 percent.
“The momentum achieved will continue in 2026”
Thank God the momentum we have achieved in exports will continue in 2026. Due to the holiday effect, there was a temporary weakening of our foreign trade data in May. But on May 22, we reached our highest ever level of $2.4 billion in daily exports. Of course, the increase in Turkish exports shows a great improvement not only in quantity but also in quality. Our exports of medium and high technology products amounted to US$10 billion in 2002 and increased to US$112 billion in 2025. Our annual exports of medium and high technology manufacturing products reached $114.4 billion.
“Defense and aviation exports amounted to 3 billion 863 million dollars”
I would like to draw your particular attention to these numbers. According to the latest data, defense and aerospace exports increased by 29 percent in the January-May period, reaching 3 billion 863 million dollars. Our defense exports therefore increased by 29.5 percent in the first five months of the year. From an annual defense industry export of $248 million, we have reached the level of an export of $992 million per month in the same sector. In other words, thank God we now export in a week what we used to do in a year. These numbers were achieved through Türkiye's focus on technology-intensive products and we aim to further increase this share.
“During January-May, 21 of our provinces exported over $1 billion.”
Another goal of ours is to distribute our exports across the country. Thank God we have made significant progress in this regard. During January-May, 21 of our provinces exported over $1 billion. We continue our efforts to involve more of our provinces in exports. I hope everyone knows this once and for all. Despite all the problems, conflicts and crises, there are very few examples in the world that can compare with the rapid increase in our country's exports. Of course we will not stop here, we will not be satisfied with the current situation.
“We want to increase our exports to distant countries to 50 billion dollars”
We will take this success story even further by expanding our export network focused on nearby regions to more distant regions, by developing new capabilities to meet the new needs of our exporters, and through new mechanisms that provide financing that matches the pace and needs of our increasing exports.
Hopefully we can achieve this together with you, as we have done for 23 years. We do our part to ensure that the ships that leave our ports, the trucks that leave our borders and the cargo planes that transport products made in Türkiye work for our businessmen. At times we have expedited our own bureaucracy for our exporters, and at times we have removed obstacles through negotiations with other countries. When I meet with a head of state or government, the demands of our exporters and investors are always at the top of my list of notes.
I will definitely discuss the issue with my interlocutor and ask my friends to reflect on the willingness to find a solution on the trade routes. I then follow these tasks very closely. Knowing our stance, the leaders of other countries opened their doors to our businessmen and welcomed the Turkish business community. From free trade agreements to preferential trade agreements, from mutual investment promotion to double taxation avoidance, we have created and are building all types of legal infrastructure to support you. Our goal is to increase our exports, especially to distant countries, to $50 billion by 2028. We are working to increase the share of high potential Organization of Islamic Cooperation member countries in our total exports to 30 percent.
“We increased the capital of Eximbank from 13.8 billion lira to 100 billion lira”
On the other hand, we are constantly accelerating our customs processes by using all digitalization options to make transport easier. We are also taking important steps to diversify financing instruments and improve their accessibility. We provide uninterrupted support in expanding our export range through Turkish Eximbank and Turkish Commercial Bank and Export Development Joint Stock Company.
We increased Eximbank's capital from 13.8 billion lira to 100 billion lira. Our bank's credit and insurance support reached $26 billion, an increase of 31 percent in the first five months of this year. Hopefully, at the end of the year, our bank will break a record with $60 billion in support. On the other hand, the Turkish Commercial Bank, which recently started operations, provided financial support of 76.3 billion liras to our exporters in 2025. The Export Development Joint Stock Company, on the other hand, provided 200 billion lira worth of guarantees for our exporters' 228 billion lira loans from the end of 2025.
Rediscount loans provided by our Central Bank amounted to 1 trillion 300 billion lira last year. On the other hand, we are aware of the difficulties arising from the negative atmosphere in the global markets, especially in the European market. To help you overcome these difficulties, we provide foreign exchange conversion assistance to our exporters and support their production and competitiveness.
“We are increasing the daily limit for rediscount loans to 5 billion lira”
On this occasion I would like to share some good news with you. As you know, we have increased the daily limit for rediscount loans from 300 million lira to 4.5 billion lira. This time we are increasing this number to 5 billion liras with an additional 500 million liras. In other words, we have increased the daily limit for rediscount loans, which was 300 million lira three years ago, by about 17 times to 5 billion lira. I hope it will be beneficial for our entire export family.
“Türkiye is not the introverted Türkiye of yesterday.”
Dear friends, of course all sorts of political, economic and social tensions in our region affect and will affect us too. However, Türkiye is not the introverted Türkiye of yesterday. There is now a Türkiye that is integrated with the world in all areas, has acquired the ability to build relationships on equal terms and is respected by the major powers. We are entering a phase in which we move together with our exporters to new opportunities and new continents, acting with an approach that turns every encounter with global crises into political and economic gains.
By working with the government and the private sector, we will hopefully raise our country's export cap significantly higher in this new period. I pray that God will open our path and our happiness.
With these sentiments, I once again hope that the General Assembly will be beneficial to our Turkish Exporters Assembly and congratulate our companies and businessmen who have deemed worthy of the Export Champions Award. I express my love and respect to all of you, stay healthy.
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