ABOUT US
Turkish Enterprise and Business Confederation (TÜRKONFED) International is the first and only international federation of TÜRKONFED, which is organized through Turkey’s 30 federations, more than 300 associations and over 50 thousand businesspeople based on volunteerism and independence, and which accounts for 55% of our country’s agricultural and non-public employment, and for 88% of foreign trade, excluding energy sector.
TÜRKONFED International, whose establishment was discussed for the first time during TÜRKONFED’s work trip to Kyiv in 2013, was founded by Turkish business associations in Germany, Georgia, Iraq, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, and Ukraine at the TÜRKONFED Çanakkale summit in November 2015.
TÜRKONFED International, which entered into a process of rapid expansion and development despite the pandemic after 2019, is the largest business people’s organization of our country formed by independent associations abroad, operating in 72 countries, with 18 member associations and chambers of commerce.
Vision
To create the largest businesspeople network of our country based on institutions abroad by connecting the foreign Turkish business world spread over 6 continents on a common platform consisting of business associations and chambers of commerce.
Mission
To contribute to the development of mutual trade and investments as a platform that provides sustainable relations between Turkish associations and chambers of commerce abroad and the business world in Turkey.
BURAK PEHLİVAN – President of TÜRKONFED International
He was born in 1978 in Istanbul. After graduating from Suadiye Turhan ve Mediha Tansel Primary School ranking first in class, he completed his secondary and high school education at Istanbul Erkek High School. In high school, he won three Istanbul championships in chess with the school team. While he received his undergraduate degree in Industrial Engineering from Istanbul Technical University (ITU), Faculty of Business Administration, he served as the two-term president of the Industrial Engineering Club (İTÜ EMK), which is one of Turkey’s largest and most active student associations.
After graduation, he held managerial positions in the machinery and construction sectors in Turkey. Since 2003, he made many trips to Eastern European countries, especially Ukraine and Russia, and because of his travels and commercial activities, he had the opportunity to observe this geography closely. Burak Pehlivan founded the Kyiv-based company Politek Impeks in 2009, which is engaged in the trade of machinery and machinery equipment and is the market leader in its sector in Ukraine. He is still a member of the board of Politeks Impeks.
Burak Pehlivan has been serving as the Deputy Chairman of the Board of Directors of Turkish Ukrainian Business Association (TUID), which was deemed worthy of the Turkish Businessmen’s Association of the Year Award in Eastern Europe in 2012, for three terms since 2011. He was elected as the Chairman of the Board of TUID in 2016. In 2018, he was awarded the Great Friend of Poland and Ukraine at the Polish Baltic Business Forum. He is a Congress Member of Beşiktaş and the Founding President of the Ukrainian Beşiktaş Fans Association.
He wrote more than a thousand articles, articles, papers and reports on Ukraine, Ukraine-Turkey relations, Eastern European countries and daily life; Pehlivan, who is an expert in fields such as Ukraine, development policies, Ukraine-Turkey economic relations and free trade in the organizations of international institutions and organizations such as OECD, EBRD, UNDP, USAID and World Bank, also shares his views as a speaker and gives dozens of speeches on these issues. He speaks German, English, Italian and Russian. His previously published articles and new works have been collectively published on his personal blog burakpehlivan.org for eight years.
