2007 archive
The candidacy period: mission, vision, projects, events, and albums.
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Mission
Dr. Ragıp Mustafa Başbuğ has made it a principle to give back, as service, what he received from his family, his hometown, and his nation.
Around those principles we will keep working, honestly, with dignity, and with initiative, turning the experience of a professional life into service for the development, happiness, and prosperity of the hometown. “Everything for Turkey.”
Vision
Dr. Ragıp Başbuğ put a career in information technology behind him, turned experience with current technologies into models of development, and set out to bring wide-ranging, deep, innovative models of the future to the hometown.
He assessed the present condition of the hometown, scaled the means at hand together with its socioeconomic and cultural values and its people, set development models, and shared them with the public.
We aim to share all of these projects, and new ones as they appear, with the people, to think them through together, and to draw and achieve the future together.
To leave poverty behind and reach brighter days, we set our minds and hearts on becoming people of a city that produces technology, rather than people who only use the technologies of the twenty-first century. There is no turning back. “Everything for Turkey.”
Local projects for Sivas and the region
Historic and cultural restoration, cultural tourism
Complete the restoration of every historic monument in Sivas and Divriği.
Restore the Divriği Great Mosque (under UNESCO protection), Divriği Castle and Kesdoğan Castle, the baths, tombs, bridges, and the houses of Divriği. Together with Divriği and Sivas, add economic value for the people along the cultural and historic line of Kangal, Eğin, Kemah, and Arapkir.
Because Divriği has no hotel, secure five-star hotel projects and incentives. The region suits many outdoor sports. Equipped with historic places and public facilities, a starting target of 50,000 visitors and overnight stays a year is realistic. Tourism income of 50 million US dollars for Sivas, Divriği, and the region is written down as an economic value for stopping migration and attracting investment.
A suspension bridge or cable car between Divriği Castle and Kesdoğan Castle, and viewing terraces. Rafting from the Çaltı to Kemah; climbing, hunting, paragliding, and balloon trips and festivals in the triangle of Eğin and Kemah.
Sivas TeknoSoft software technopark
Establish the TeknoSoft Software Technopark under Cumhuriyet University or KOSGEB in Sivas. With software engineering and programming programs given real weight at Cumhuriyet University, Sivas would become Turkey’s new center of software development.
Because Sivas and the region are among the places that lose the most people to migration, development there should favor software, the technology with the lowest investment cost and the highest added value. Treated as a national and strategic subject, software would make Sivas Turkey’s software center.
Once a software industry is established in Sivas, many firms from inside and outside the province would come to invest in software production, and they would hire graduates of Cumhuriyet University’s software engineering and programming programs, so students would have work while they are still studying. Cumhuriyet University would become one of Turkey’s most sought-after universities.
By making room for as many companies as possible in the Sivas TeknoSoft Technopark, and by competing with the software centers of India and Eastern Europe during the European Union process, European firms would choose Sivas in Turkey instead of going to India and Russia. The technopark would be an offshore software partner of large Western firms, and it would also build brands of its own.
Turkey had to do its part in this field ten years earlier and finish it. The poor experience and the losses of having missed that chance have to be overcome with the Sivas TeknoSoft Technopark. A sector whose investment cost is training people and providing a computer is a strategic technology priority for Turkey’s development. Because the world’s most important companies (Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, and others) are software firms, effort will be spent on investment in this field.
Industrial agricultural products
Grain leads agricultural production in Sivas and the region. Given the climate and the geography, products with a high dollar value per kilogram should be encouraged, so that what the producer earns from the land increases. Otherwise villagers and farmers who own land migrate because the return is not enough and the conditions are hard.
Those products are the herbs and plants used in herbal teas and the pharmaceutical industry, walnut, mulberry, sericulture, grape, apricot, and apple. Besides raw production, they should enter the market as branded, packaged goods, and they should go to national and international markets rather than stay in local consumption.
Kayseri advanced in furniture, and Sivas entered that field too. Against heavy competition and a narrowing market, it is worth moving into alternative products. Livestock is mostly live animals. Integrated producers in meat and poultry also strengthen branding. Afyon built a brand in sucuk; Sivas has not.
National brands for local products
Producers of goods made and consumed in the Sivas region have not been able to build brands, and they have remained regional. Support projects will be set up for incentives, training, company vision, and readiness for competition; a producer inventory database will be built; and economic and commercial institutions will be put to work.
The historic monuments of Divriği show the quarries and the stone work. A vocational school of stone carving will be established, and the quarries will be brought into the construction industry as material. Over four years the target is at least ten products in Sivas that have become national brands.
Iron, foundry work, and rolling
There are mining operations in Sivas and the region. The Divriği iron mine has shipped its ore raw for years. If foundry work and rolling are encouraged in the district, products other than ore will be shipped, employment will grow, and the complaint that little of the mine’s income returns to the city can be answered.
General projects
- Information technology: developing Turkey’s software industry.
- Technology: a gateway project among chambers of commerce and industry.
- Agriculture: national seed production, national seed genetics, and seed development.
- Environment: developing and spreading drip irrigation, preventing desertification, and protecting freshwater sources.
Press release, 22 May 2007
Dr. Ragıp Mustafa Başbuğ, a doctoral engineer, announced that they would establish the TeknoSoft Technopark in Sivas, a first in Turkey. He stated that, by giving weight to software engineering and programming programs at Cumhuriyet University, they would make Sivas Turkey’s new center of software development.
Because Sivas and the region are among the places that lose the most people to migration, he argued that Sivas would become the hub of the software sector, the technology with the lowest investment cost and the highest added value. He said firms would hire their programmers from graduates of Cumhuriyet University, so students would have work while they were still studying, and the university would become one of the most sought-after in Turkey.
“We will work to make room for as many companies as possible in the Sivas TeknoSoft Technopark. We are thinking big, and during the European Union process we will compete with the software centers of India and Eastern Europe. We will be the offshore software partners of large Western firms, and we will also be software producers who have succeeded in building our own brands. We will leave India and the other countries behind in this field.”
“I am determined to make Sivas Turkey’s new center of software development, and I will work for it to the end.”