TÜSİAD urges next president to take steps to ‘eliminate polarization’

The newly elected head of Turkey’s largest business group has paid courtesy visits to Cabinet members and the opposition party leaders in Ankara, calling on the next president of the country to take “constructive steps to eliminate growing polarization in society.”

The headquarters of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) was the first stop in the capital for a delegation headed by the newly-elected president of the Turkish Industrial and Business Association (TÜSİAD), Haluk Dinçer.

A day before, Dinçer and members of TÜSİAD’s board of directors were in Istanbul to visit President Abdullah Gül, who is currently residing at the Huber Villa in the Tarabya Presidential Campus.

“We [TÜSİAD] are at an equal distance from all candidates,” Dinçer told reporters on July 2 during a visit to Science, Industry and Technology Minister Fikri Işık, while extending his good wishes for the announcement of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) presidential candidate.

“No matter who is elected, we want steps that will decrease social polarization to be taken after the elections. We want him to display leadership for having an environment of dialogue and plurality settled in Turkey. We want the feeling of fraternity and ‘us’ to be solidified again,” he added
The delegation also visited Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, though no press statement was issued after the meeting with Davutoğlu, and none was issued after its meeting with CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. Dinçer and his colleagues will be in Ankara again on July 9 to exchange views about TÜSİAD’S...