A delegation of nearly Pakistani 80 politicians and reporters visited Turkey’s Albayrak Group in Istanbul.
A delegation of nearly 80 politicians and reporters headed by Pakistan’s Istanbul envoy Bilal Khan Pasha visited Turkey’s Albayrak Group, which operates in various Pakistani cities, on Sunday. Albayrak Board Member Nuri Albayrak stated that 13,000 Pakistanis were involved in Albayrak’s activities carried out in Pakistan.
Group Chairman of the Board Ahmet Albayrak, Board of Directors members Nuri and Mesut Albayrak, CEO Ömer Bolat, Piri Media General Manager Ömer Karaca and former General Manager of the Higher Education Student Loan and Housing Board Hasan Albayrak hosted the delegation.
Albayrak Group operates in four Pakistani cities
“We conduct waste management and environmental cleaning as well as operate the metrobus, public buses and taxis in four of Pakistan’s cities. We employ 13,000 Pakistanis,” said Albayrak Board Member Nuri Albayrak.
“These are the activities we conduct as a result of winning official tenders open to national and international competition. If there are international tenders for similar activities in other cities in Pakistan, we would like to operate in those cities too,” he added.
Members of the group took photos with Group Chairman of the Board Ahmet Albayrak.
Albayrak Group employs 13,000 Pakistanis
“Following our work in Pakistan, we won tenders to operate ports in Somalia and Guinea. We are pleased to serve the people of Pakistan and contribute to Pakistan’s development. Our Pakistani employees are hardworking. Pakistani state administration, bureaucracy, laws, and procedures are very efficient. There are 25 Turks and 13,000 Pakistanis at our firm there. If we have pleased the Pakistani people in terms of environmental cleaning, waste collection, and transportation, then we are very happy,” Albayrak said.
Turkey and Pakistan “are two friendly and allied countries”
“We aim to contribute in order to increase the prosperity of the people of Pakistan. According to economic developments, we have plans to increase our investments in new areas. Turkey and Pakistan are two friendly and allied countries. The religious and social values, culture and fate of the Turkish and Pakistani people are united. Our national flags are even similar due to the crescent and stars. Turkey and Pakistan, the two countries, are like one nation. I hope that, like the political relations between the two allied countries, our economic relations will also reach much greater targets. Both sides should work diligently for this purpose,” Albayrak said.
Albayrak Board Member Nuri Albayrak
“We are a big family”
“We are a group of seven partners, who are all siblings. Our father started with construction. Then we developed in the services and logistics sector as well as personnel and passenger transportation, waste collection and management, and port operation. We focused on the industrial sector with the production of military and police uniforms, textiles, tractors, diesel engines, tank engines, casting and environmental cleaning tools. In 2018, we started sugar production with two sugar factories,” Albayrak said.
Hopefully at the beginning of 2019, we will launch our paper mill with an investment of 150 million euros. We have been one of the leading media organizations in the field of newspaper and television broadcasting, as well as our 12 monthly magazines and digital publishing, for 20 years. We are a big family with a total of 20,000 employees. In the past, we have conducted activities in Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Iraq,” he added.
Turkey and Pakistan are intrinsically linked
Albayrak Group CEO Ömer Bolat dubbed the visit as sincere and productive, saying: “We are trying to bolster economic ties in addition to our brotherhood. The delegation invited us to invest in all regions of Pakistan and share our experiences in the industry and services sector. We discussed our ongoing activities that started in 2011 in four of Pakistan’s cities. We told them that we have been pleased to contribute to Pakistan's economic development for eight years. Pakistan’s prosperity is Turkey’s prosperity. Turkey’s prosperity is Pakistan’s prosperity.”
The 80th death anniversary of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey, was commemorated in Pakistan on Saturday.A ceremony was hosted by the Turkish Ambassador to Pakistan Mustafa Yurdakul at the Turkish Embassy in Islamabad.Yurdakul welcomed the participants at the ceremony and paid tributes to Atatürk.Rıdvan Türkoğlu, second secretary at the Turkish Embassy, quoted remarks of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, that the death of Atatürk was a big loss for the Muslim world.Atatürk was born in 1881 in Thessaloniki, in what was then the Ottoman Empire. He made his mark in the military in 1915 when he led forces to repel the allied invasion in Çanakkale, known in the West as the Dardanelles.Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War, Atatürk led the Turkish War of Independence, which defeated European powers. When he became president, Atatürk transformed the former empire into a modern and secular country.Atatürk passed away on Nov. 10, 1938, at the age of 57.Erdoğan marks 80th anniversary of Atatürk's demiseTurks in Jordan mark anniversary of Ataturk's demise
Atatürk’s death anniversary marked in Pakistan
A Pakistani Christian woman has been freed from prison a week after the Supreme Court overturned her conviction and death sentence for blasphemy against Islam, and she is at a secure location for fear of attacks on her, officials said on Thursday.The release of Asia Bibi, a mother of five, prompted immediate anger from a party that has threatened to paralyse daily life countrywide with street protests if her acquittal is not reversed.Bibi, 53, was convicted of blasphemy in 2010 over allegations she made derogatory remarks about Islam after neighbours objected to her drinking water from their glass because she was not Muslim.She always denied having committed blasphemy.Pakistan invites Turkey to join $64 billion megaprojectThe case has outraged Christians worldwide, and Pope Francis met Bibi's family this year, saying he prayed for her. Italy said on Tuesday it would try to help Bibi, who is Catholic, to leave Pakistan.Muahmmad Faisal, spokesman for Pakistan foreign ministry, on Thursday morning denied media reports Bibi has been flown out of country."She is in Pakistan," Faisal told Reuters via the WhatsApp messaging service.Insulting Islam's Prophet Mohammad carries a mandatory death penalty in Pakistan, which is about 95 percent Muslim and has among the harshest blasphemy laws in the world.Pakistan says Chinese help stemmed payment crisisNo executions for blasphemy have been carried out in Pakistan but enraged mobs sometimes kill people accused of blasphemy.Christians make up about 2 percent of the population.Three security officials told Reuters early on Thursday that Bibi had been released from a prison in Multan, a city in the south of Punjab province.She was flown to the airport near the capital, Islamabad, and was in protective custody because of threats to her life, said the three officials, speaking on condition of anonymity.Galeri: Aasia Bibi protests stymie Pakistan for third dayBibi's lawyer, who has fled Pakistan and this week sought asylum in the Netherlands, confirmed she was no longer in prison."All I can tell you is that she has been released," lawyer Saif-ul-Mulook told Reuters by phone from the Netherlands.A spokesman for the hard-line Tehreek-e-Labaik (TLP) party, which took to the streets after the Supreme Court ruling, said her release violated a deal with the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan to end the protests."The TLP activists are agitated as the government has breached the agreement with our party. The rulers have showed their dishonesty," party spokesman Ejaz Ashrafi told Reuters.Under the deal, the government said it would not block a petition to the Supreme Court to review Bibi's acquittal in light of sharia, Islamic religious law, the TLP said.It also said the government promised to work to ensure Bibi could not leave the country.If the government allows Bibi to leave, it would likely face more paralysing protests from the TLP and other parties.
Pakistani Christian woman freed after blasphemy death sentence reversed
Pakistan Wednesday said the U.S had promised to "look into" its request for respecting the human and legal rights of a Pakistani educationist languishing in an American jail for attempted murder.In a statement, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry said it had raised the issue of Aafia Siddiqui with Assistant Secretary of State Alice Wells during her day-long visit to Islamabad earlier this week.In 2010, Aafia was sentenced to 89 years in prison by a U.S. court for attacking an American soldier in Afghanistan."The issue of respecting the human and legal rights of Dr. Afia Siqqiqui was also raised in the meeting at MoFA ( Ministry of Foreign Affairs) with Ambassador Alice Wells on November 6. (The) US side has promised to look into our request", the statement said.Pakistan, it added, had been raising the issue of Aafia with the U.S authorities regularly."Pakistan’s Consul General in Houston (Texas) pays Consular visits to Dr. Siddiqui, periodically, to inquire about her wellbeing and conveys her messages to Dr. Afia’s family if any," the statement further said.Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi will soon meet with the sister of Aafia in Islamabad, it maintained.The development came days after Aafia who is currently serving a jail in Houston wrote a letter to Prime Minister Imran Khan requesting him to work to secure her release as her conviction was "wrong" and " illegal."Khan, who held the country's reigns after the general elections in July this year, had promised to work for Aafia’s release in his election manifesto.Aafia, who graduated from MIT and did her PhD from Brandise University in Education, had gone missing in Pakistan in 2004 along with her three minor children before she was discovered in a U.S military base in Bagram, Afghanistan in 2008.She was accused of attacking a U.S soldier during interrogation -- an account dismissed by herself and her family.It was a British journalist, Yvonne Ridley, who revealed the presence of Siddiqui at the Bagram detention center in 2008.The court had also refused to take into account the circumstances under which she was kidnapped from Pakistan and taken to Afghanistan despite her lawyers' repeated requests.
Pakistan raises issue of jailed Aafia with US
Pakistan has invited Turkey to join the multi-billion-dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project, which would benefit both countries, official media said Thursday."Pakistan highly values its relations with Turkey, and the new government desires to further strengthen relations between Islamabad and Ankara, said Asad Qaiser, speaker of the National Assembly, while speaking with Turkey’s ambassador to Pakistan Ihsan Mustafa Yurdakul.Yurdakul met with Qaiser in his office at Parliament House in Islamabad.According to state-run Radio Pakistan, Qaiser invited Turkey to join CPEC, which will benefit all countries in the region.CPEC, a $64 billion megaproject signed in 2014, aims to connect China's strategically important northwestern Xinjiang province to Pakistan’s Gwadar Port through a network of roads, railways and pipelines to transport cargo, oil and gas.The economic corridor will not only provide China with cheaper access to Africa and the Middle East but will also earn Pakistan billions of dollars for providing transit facilities to the world’s second-largest economy.Turkey’s ambassador also vowed to strengthen relations with Pakistan."The Turkish people always consider Pakistan as their second home, and we wish to see this country always strong and prosperous," Yurdakul said.Yurdakul also extended an invitation to Qaiser to attend the second League of Parliamentarian Conference for Al-Quds, which will be held on Dec. 14 in Istanbul.
Pakistan invites Turkey to join $64 billion megaproject
Pakistan's balance of payment crisis is over after Beijing’s assurance it would provide short-term financial relief to Islamabad, the country’s finance minister said on Tuesday.The announcement came a day before an International Monetary Fund team is due to arrive in Islamabad to discuss a financial package for the country.Addressing a press conference with Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Finance Minister Asad Umar said that during Premier Imran Khan’s just-concluded visit to China, Beijing agreed to extend an economic relief package to Pakistan."Pakistan urgently needed $12 billion to bridge the gap of the current account deficit, and that gap was almost filled with the help of Saudi Arabia and China," said Umar, but gave no details of China's package.The governor of Pakistan’s State Bank and Finance Secretary Arif Ahmed Khan will meet Chinese officials on Friday in Beijing to discuss the package, he added.Pakistan, China agree to trade in yuanOver 1,200 arrested over blasphemy protests in PakistanChina's economic future is linked to Pakistan through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), though which China hopes to gain access to the Arabian Sea.Saudi Arabia last month announced a $6 billion financial package for Pakistan during Khan’s visit to the kingdom.Beijing and Islamabad signed 15 agreements and memoranda of understanding during Khan’s visit, including one for using Chinese currency in bilateral trade in lieu of U.S. dollars."The use of local currencies in bilateral trade would benefit both countries, while China also offered subsidized foreign exchange rates when both countries trade in local currencies," Umar said.Qureshi said that both countries agreed to upgrade the strategic dialogue to the foreign minister-level and strengthen cooperation in all fields, including defense and the economy.China and Pakistan also agreed that prisoners of both countries will serve their remaining sentences in their respective countries, Qureshi added.
Pakistan says Chinese help stemmed payment crisis