The Istanbul Human Resources Forum, organized by the Turkish Presidency’s Human Resources Office and sponsored by Turkuvaz Media Group, began on Monday in the Turkish metropolis. Under the theme of "Talent Hub of the New Century," the forum seeks to bring together human resources professionals and promote Türkiye as an attraction for job seekers.

In a written message to the two-day event, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Türkiye was yearning to promote a human resources culture in the private and public sectors, "based on equal opportunities, transparency, accountability, innovation and merit."

"We achieved progress to that extent in the past two decades with our democracy, basic rights and freedoms, investments in infrastructure and digitalization," he said. The president highlighted that "a climate where no citizen, regardless of their faith, view or ethnicity is subject to discrimination prevailed in Türkiye." Erdoğan emphasized that the new presidential system empowered corporate capacity in better human resources management. "We adopted a human resources model, more accessible to people and will improve our citizens’ skills," he said.

Addressing the forum, associate professor Salim Atay, head of the Presidency’s Human Resources Office, said their office shared its experience both with the private sector and other countries, citing an agreement they signed with Turkic states to promote a digital human resources system by bringing together job seekers and employers with the Organization of Turkic States (OTC) last month. Atay said they were ready to share it with other countries as well. He also said that the country, with its young population, had a talent capacity and noted that Turkish entrepreneurs found a place for themselves in every sector and country. Yet, he noted that compared to its talent capacity, Türkiye is viewed as less professional in terms of human resources. "With the training of human resources professionals, enterprises can significantly contribute to Türkiye’s growth process," he said.

Atay also touched upon claims on some media outlets that some 30,000 software developers left Türkiye for other countries last year. "It is true that there is a slowdown in the growth of the software sector. Our office has all the data and monitors the mobility of talent. Talented people have always been eager to leave for other countries to learn new things, which is quite normal. But such a movement of software developers en masse is not true. The software sector in Europe grew 7.5% last year, while this was 12.5% in Türkiye. In addition, the number of software developers in Türkiye grew by 17.8% last year. So, we don’t have any losses, nor a decline in the software sector.