Marmara Group Foundation Secretary General Sezgin Bilgiç and Executive Council member Mahmut Saklı, who are in the People's Republic of China to attend the CPAFFC (Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries) meetings, met with President Yang Wanming. Devletşah Yayan, First Secretary of the Embassy in Beijing was also present at the meeting. Sezgin Bilgiç and Mahmut Saklı, who presented information about the activities of the Marmara Group Foundation at the meeting, also thanked CPAFFC for hosting them. During their stay in the People's Republic of China, Sezgin Bilgiç and Mahmut Saklı, who were also received by the Ambassador of the Republic of Turkey to Beijing İsmail Hakkı Musa, explained the latest activities of the Marmara Group Foundation to Ambassador İsmail Hakkı Musa. In his speech at the conference organized in Beijing, Secretary General of Marmara Group Foundation Sezgin Bilgiç brought up the need for peace together with the Belt and Road. The text of Sezgin Bilgiç's speech is below:

 
TEXT OF THE SPEECH DELIVERED BY MARMARA GROUP FOUNDATION SECRETARY GENERAL SEZGİN BİLGİÇ AT CPAFFC

Ladies and Gentlemen.

I would like to start by thanking our host, CPAFFC, on behalf of the Marmara Group Foundation for its great hospitality, together with myself, and my friend Mahmut Saklı. As you are well aware, as Marmara Group Foundation, we attach great importance to the Belt and Road Initiative.

The Belt and Road has values. It would be incomplete to consider these values only in terms of economy and profit. Because we consider the Belt and Road not only as a large-scale infrastructure project aiming to connect Asia, Europe, and Africa through six economic corridors by land and sea but also as a peace project.

Again, we see this project, which covers sixty-five percent of the world's population and seventy countries, as a peace project beyond considering it as a project covering infrastructure investments such as roads, railways, ports, power plants, and airports. We call the middle corridor initiative, which extends by rail from Turkey to Georgia and Azerbaijan, then across the Caspian Sea, through Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan to China, a peace initiative. Therefore, in our opinion, the Belt and Road initiative is a peace project. It is a philosophy of stability. Of course, there will be profit, of course, there will be trade, of course, and there will be economy. But above all, the Belt and Road Initiative is the gateway to peace and stability. To summarize, it is a fact that the Belt and Road Initiative enables many different countries with different cultures, values, and political systems to come together in the economic field.

But first, I think it is important to recognize that global peace and the economy also face geopolitical tensions that exacerbate the disruption of supply chains, lead to shortages and price spikes, and call into question the security of global trade. The ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, the escalating Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and the military escalation in the Red Sea are causing problems in our region. On the other hand, although the Trans-Caspian Corridor has the chance to become the largest global transportation route, it is known that it is not yet efficient.

All these economic facts are real. However, the most important fact is the stability that the Belt and Road will bring to our continent and thus to humanity. It is peace. This road to peace will enable languages to recognize languages. Again, this path to peace will enable languages to learn languages through the Belt and Road. In the same way, cultures will get to know cultures, people will get to know people and they will reach the ways of thinking and deciding together. That is why we, as the Marmara Group Foundation, consider this project as a path to peace. We continue our work with our high belief that this illuminated path opened by President Xi Jinping will illuminate our tomorrows and bring peace to a temperate climate.