Son, go grab two airports and a skyscraper while you're at it

The Turkish construction sector has provided over 500 billion dollars in added value to the country through international construction projects it has been carrying out since the 1970s.

They have not only built the infrastructure of many countries around the world but also their superstructures.

Our construction firms, which were once only able to act as subcontractors for foreign companies operating in our country due to a lack of sufficient technology and knowledge, have now become strong competitors to those foreign firms on the international stage.

They have even begun executing construction projects in developed and industrialized countries like Germany and the UK, competing against their former bosses.

In recent times, they have reached a scale of 20-25 billion dollars annually.

They have generated an "export of construction" revenue that is almost ahead of our country's pride and joy, the "Turkish Automotive Sector."

Almost all of its input is domestic.

It is not growth based on imports.

It achieved this growth with its own engineers, contractors, workers, and material producers.

The experience, or "know-how," gained by our firms and our "engineers and workers" has brought sustainable growth along with it.

It has become a sector that grows more every year compared to the previous one.

Thanks to this experience and accumulation, our contractors no longer feel any anxiety when undertaking projects abroad.

Our engineers and architects, who graduated from deep-rooted institutions established by the "poor" but "modern Turkey" during the Cold War era—such as Karadeniz Technical, Istanbul Technical, Middle East Technical, Boğaziçi, and Anadolu University—have reached the capability to manage construction sites all over the world, in challenging geographies where temperatures range from minus 50 to plus 50 degrees, and on ancestral lands stretching from the Sahara deserts to the Siberian steppes.

Our contractors, who years ago were doing residential work with simple hand tools abroad, have now started building industrial structures such as oil refineries and airports.

Not only construction, but they also secure the financing for the projects themselves from international financial institutions, successfully executing projects with highly complex algorithms based on trust and high collateral, such as Build-Operate-Transfer.

Because they have attained the status of reliable merchants, they both find the money and build and operate the technological projects that foreign countries need, such as airports, roads, and high-speed trains.

They collect the billion-dollar loans they secure from international financial institutions by operating the projects they have built, gathering "one dollar at a time" to repay the loans.

The boss of TAV Construction, Mr. Mustafa Sani Şener, who also holds a doctorate, is one of our leading engineer-contractors who does this work best.

When you travel through the Arab world, the Gulf Region where emirates like Dubai and Abu Dhabi are located, and the Upper Sahara where Libya is, you frequently encounter the "TAV CONSTRUCTION" logo.

Sani Bey's firm, TAV CONSTRUCTION, has built almost all of the airports.

It hasn't just built them; it also operates almost all of them itself.

When you stick your head out just a little bit from the country's Black Sea border gate, you see TAV Construction at Batumi Airport.

All the way in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan.

Through its partnership with the world's largest financial institutions, it is possible to see it following projects 10 thousand kilometers away in the United States of America.

You also see Sani Bey at Skopje Airport, our home and true ancestral land where we stayed for more than 500 years, which will surely be ours again one day.

When you head into the city in Dubai, you again encounter skyscrapers built by "TAV Construction."

By building 40-50 story, highly sophisticated buildings, they have left the Turkish signature in the world's richest cities.

Now, they are rebuilding Antalya Airport together with Germany's largest airline company.

Following the construction, they will increase our country's tourism revenues by transporting millions of tourists to the Antalya region.

They successfully opened Alanya Gazipaşa Airport, which was said to be impossible to build due to a very high mountain barrier in front of it, to international flights, transporting millions of Europeans to the Alanya region with zero errors.

It is easy to write, but it is hardly possible for our minds to grasp the geographies traveled and the figures mentioned.

May God be pleased with him; while most of us struggle to get from home to work, how did Sani Bey manage to do all this work?

It is not difficult to understand the secret of that work either.

When you get to know the engineers and technical team working within TAV Construction, you immediately understand why Sani Bey is so brave and successful.

Sani Bey somehow "recruited" into the "TAV Construction" structure successful engineers who had the capacity to stay at the university upon the recommendation and guidance of their professors after graduation.

These friends, who would have carried Turkish Higher Education much further had they stayed in the academic environment of the university, have instead carried the Turkish Construction Sector forward.

Not long ago, just half a century ago, in a geography struggling in the grip of the Cold War, in an environment of heavy inflation, with scarce resources, engineers who graduated from universities established by the impoverished Turkish State, who speak several languages and hold domestic and international master's and doctoral degrees, have, under Sani Bey's leadership and the strategic line he created, left the signature of TAV Construction and the Turkish engineer-architect and worker in many parts of the world.

Sani Bey made the work easy, bringing it to the point of "PICKING UP TWO LOAVES OF BREAD AND A PITA FROM THE BAKERY."

I am ending this story here for now.

But there is more to come.