Turkish Trade Minister Seeks Georgia Partners

Mr. Tuzmen's lively personality kept the early-morning audience at the Southern Center engaged. A talented athlete, Mr. Tuzmen recently swam four continuous miles across the Bosporus Strait near Istanbul.

Turkish Foreign Trade Minister Kürsad Tüzmen has sought to open his country to investment and open markets for Turkey’s products since taking his position in 2002.

As Turkey has reigned in inflation, fought unemployment and developed quality products, Mr. Tüzmen has overseen substantial gains foreign direct investment and exports.

In 2007, the country attracted more than $20 billion in foreign investment, up from only $982 million in 2000, according to data from the World Bank.

Now, with more steady economic footing, Turkey is looking to Georgia and other U.S. states to keep the trend alive.

At a breakfast briefing at the Southern Center for International Studies in Atlanta, Mr. Tüzmen said that about 70 percent of U.S. trade with Turkey goes through six states: California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois and New York and Texas.

The Turkish Ministry of Commerce and Industry has said that it wants to double trade and investment with these strategic states, which also are gateways into their respective regions.

“That’s why I wanted to get to know you, one by one,” he told a crowd at the Southern Center that included members of a Turkish delegation as well as business leaders and officials representing Atlanta’s many Turkish organizations.

He said that stable government since 2002 has helped Turkey build the foundation that has led to its economic growth.  Inflation stood at 49 percent in 2000 but was only 9 percent last year.

Mr. Tüzmen joked that the Turkish lira once presented layout problems in the exchange rate page in The Economist magazine because it was seven digits against the dollar before being revalued in 2005.

Now, the country is looking to increase the quality of its exports and seeks Georgia partners for the development of its high-tech industry.

“Low price, high quantity: This axis is not working for Turkey,” he said.

He also mentioned that he would like to create an international solar energy center in the port city of Mersin on the country’s southern coast.

Muhtar Kent, president and CEO of Coca-Cola Co. and dual citizen of Turkey and the U.S., introduced Mr. Tüzmen.  He expressed confidence that Georgia-Turkey trade and collaboration would grow as a result of Mr. Tüzmen’s determination.

“Mr. Tüzmen has made trade with Georgia and the Southeast a top priority, and I’ve come to learn that when Mr. Tüzmen sets his mind to something, it gets” completed, Mr. Kent said.

Mr. Kent worked for Coca-Cola in Istanbul for many years, where the company has a headquarters for Eurasia and Africa that oversees 93 countries.

From 1999 until he returned to Coke in 2005, he was president and CEO of Efes Beverage Group, which is headquartered in Istanbul.  Mr. Kent’s father was a Turkish diplomat who has been lauded for using his political status to save Jews during the Holocaust.

Mr. Kent told the audience that his great uncle, another Muhtar Kent, was the first Turkish ambassador to Washington after the Turkish republic was founded in 1923.

Ken Stewart, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Economic Development, said that the state’s imports and exports with Turkey were up last year and that interaction with its government has become more frequent.

Mr. Stewart hosted a parliamentary delegation last year.  Mr. Tüzmen, whose official title is state minister of trade and customs, is also a Parliament member.

From 2006 to 2007, Georgia’s exports to Turkey increased by 73 percent to $273 million.  Over the same period, the state imported $447 million in goods from Turkey through the Port of Savannah.

Mr. Stewart said the packed house at the Southern Center exemplified the growing interest in relations with Turkey.

“The fact that it’s sold out with people standing outside says a lot about this event and the connection with Turkey,” he said.

Mr. Tüzmen was in Atlanta in part to help launch Kennesaw State University’s “Year of Turkey” program, which opened official on Oct. 9.   He also spoke Oct. 8 at the inaugural dinner of the Turkish American Chamber of Commerce of the Southeast United States.

For more information, visit www.yearofturkey.org, or to learn more about the chamber, go to www.taccse.org.

 

SCAD Students Working to Revamp London Neighborhood

Students in the Savannah College of Art & Design’s department of architecture are working with the city of London’s development planning arm to redesign a 1960s neighborhood in the U.K. capital.

Design for London, a division of the Greater London Authority, is allowing SCAD students to craft proposals for revamping an area near a heavily populated network of intersections.

As described in a brief crafted by Design for London for consultants, the area is brimming with potential because it contains some famous London crossroads.

But heavy foot and vehicle traffic, “poor air quality” and “some buildings that have not stood the test of time well” keep the area from contributing maximum value to the city, the briefing said.

A group of 12 students toured the neighborhood during a two-week trip to London in late August.  They also met with planners and an architectural firm the city has hired to make the same sort of recommendations they’ll have to come up with by the end of the semester.

Students were given full access to the proposals submitted by the architectural firm.

Scott Singeisen, chair of SCAD’s architecture department, said the faculty undertook the trip to help the students fulfill an urban design requirement and learn how to apply their studio knowledge in real-life situations.

Now, a total of 24 graduate and undergraduate students are working on the plans, which they will submit to Design for London through a variety of Internet applications.

They’ll make final presentations through online video and voice communication service Skype, but Mr. Singeisen has created Google Web pages where students can upload their work periodically and get immediate feedback from judges.

SCAD has a campus in Lacoste, France, and Mr. Singeisen said the London trip helped broaden the European presence and global focus of the institution.

It also validates the reputation of SCAD and its students internationally, he said.

“My architecture graduates are sought after for their ability of integrating theory and practice, integrating technology with design sense,” he said.

But familiarity with working in a global environment has become “absolutely necessary” for today’s graduates, he said.

“We’re looking for opportunities to bring in international influence more regularly into the studio,” he told GlobalAtlanta.

That sentiment was amplified during the London trip, when Mr. Singeisen ran into a former student who is now working in New York for Gensler, a global architecture and design firm based in San Francisco.

The former student said that applicants who explicitly said they’re willing to relocate internationally were given a second look over those who didn’t.

For more information about the program, visit http://www.scad.edu/architecture.

To learn more about the trip, e-mail Melissa Wheeler at mwheeler@scad.edu.

Georgia Ports Director Promotes Expansion Despite Economic Downturn

The Georgia Ports Authority’s executive director stressed on Oct. 9 that the ports should continue expanding facilities despite the current economic woes in the U.S.

Doug Marchand said during his annual “State of the Port” speech at the Savannah International Trade and Convention Center that upgrading infrastructure and equipment is necessary to meet future demand.

The most pressing need is the deepening of the harbor at Savannah’s Garden City Terminal to 48 feet to accommodate larger ships.

“While current economic challenges demand consideration, this is not a time to retreat from the planning and construction that has driven so much of our prosperity,” Mr. Marchand said.  “This is precisely the time to aggressively secure additional capacity and, in so doing, become the driver of economic recovery and future growth.”

In the past year, the ports authority has made several improvements to its equipment and facilities.

Four new super post-Panamax cranes, the largest of their kind in the world at 367 feet tall and 480 feet long, were installed, and four more are to be delivered early next year.  Fourteen new gantry cranes for moving containers inland were also installed.

The ports authority is to complete its Chatham Yard intermodal container transfer facility in December for moving containers from ships to rail or truck.  An expansion of the James D. Mason intermodal facility has already been completed.

Total container volume handled at all of the authority’s facilities, including the Bainbridge and Columbus inland ports and ocean ports at Brunswick and Savannah, was 25 million tons in 2008, a 17.5 percent increase from last year.