Under the Presidency of IKV Chairman Ayhan Zeytinoğlu, IKV Board of Directors visited ISO. The Board was hosted by ISO Chairman Erdal Bahçıvan and Board members. IKV Vice-President, in the same time ISO Assembly President Zeynep Bodur Okyay also attended to the meeting.

The meeting in which relations with EU was discussed, ISO Vice-Chairman Adnan Dalgakıran and ISO Board Members Ali Ulvi Orhan (Sayman), Sultan Tepe ve M. Ata Ceylan participated in the meeting.

During the visit to ISO, IKV Vice-President Prof. Dr. Halûk Kabaalioğlu, IKV Member of the Board Responsible for Accounts Atila Menevşe, IKV Executive Committee Members Dr. Zeynel Abidin Erdem, Ali Sami Aydın, İlhan Koyunseven, Ahmet Sayar, Sedat Zincirkıran, IKV Audit Committee Members Hasan Hüseyin Coşkun, Mustafa İçöz, IKV Secretary-General Doç. Dr. Çiğdem Nas and IKV Deputy Secretary-General and Research Director Melih Özsöz accompanied IKV Chairman Zeytinoğlu and IKV Vice-President Zeynep Bodur Okyay.

During the meeting between IKV and ISO committees, ISO Chairman Erdal Bahçıvan stated the importance of IKV’s support to Chambers and its members especially in terms of helping them benefit from the EU funds. In order to take advantage of EU funds, ISO Chairman Bahçıvan remarked that ISO would like to benefit from IKV’s experience and knowledge and thus expressed his wish to enhance cooperation between the two institutions.

During the meeting, it was also expressed the wish to enhance cooperation in another area that of the free trade agreements, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). ISO Chairman Bahçıvan suggested to conduct together lobbying activities in order to prevent that Turkey is left out of the TTIP process and that the Customs Union has negative impacts on Turkey.

IKV Chairman Zeytinoğlu stated that IKV would like to carry out impact assessments on the modernization of the Customs Union modernisation and to ensure that the business community is being represented during the negotiations. Besides, IKV Chairman Zeytinoğlu stressed the importance of the Chambers’ contribution to the impact assessments

IKV Vice-President and ISO Assembly President Zeynep Bodur Okyay pointed out that IKV’s researcher team is a great asset for the impact analyses and she stressed that together with the use of ISO’s close relation with companies, this asset could be turned into a profit.