Could you provide the highlights of the Foundation’s activities since 2014?

The most important decision taken was to have automatic retirement for our board members who are over 80 years or older. Now the board is much younger as seven members retired at the end of 2017. The Foundation has also been organizing a lot of international congresses and technical visits to other countries and different locations in Turkey. For example, in 2017 we organized the INERMA congress and exhibition, which stands for the International Energy Raw Materials and Energy Congress, in cooperation with Istanbul Technical University.

With the university’s mining faculty, we also organized a congress on Balkan mineral processing held in Antalya, which had many attendees from Balkan countries. We also organized technical trips to Germany, Sweden and Finland, where 28 mining professionals attended. Furthermore, we delivered a Mining Master Plan for the next 20 years to the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources. We are also organizing television programs to improve the image of mining, with episodes every 15 days on Bloomberg TV and every month on Cemtv.

Where are there most opportunities in Turkey’s mining industry?

The government is giving much more priority to mining overall. Also, two years ago, the government changed its mining strategy and coal mining has been given a lot of support. Banks are now giving more credit to coal projects and some coal mines have moved to construction stage. Construction companies have much capital and have been investing a lot in mining. Also, due to new laws, large scale mining has been incentivized. For example, Cengiz Holding are investing about $1 billion in southeast Turkey, close to the Iraqi border, in a phosphate complex to make different types of fertilizers. During sulphuric acid production, they get iron oxide which is going to their leaching operation from where they recover copper, gold, cobalt, nickel etc. The complex will come into operation this year.

Two coal power plants have been built, one by Sabancı in southern Turkey, and another by Aksa Enerji in Bolu province in the northwest. Four more coal power plants are under construction, which shows the scale of investment into coal. The biggest investment recently has been made by Ciner Group which invested about $1.5 billion in solution mining in Kazan near Ankara. They will produce 2.5 million mt/y of natural soda and have expanded capacity at their Beypazari mine by 500,000 mt/y. Many gold mines have also been put into operation, with 13 mines now running and six under construction. About ten gold and silver mines are in the exploration phase. There are also some investments into copper and chromite mines, with a larger investment in a copper mine in the Kastamonu area. In two or three years all these mines should be operational. Mineral exports are now about $5 billion; however, in the last decade most demand has been domestic and exports are not growing as strongly.

How challenging is the mine licensing and environmental, health and safety regulations setup in Turkey?

We still have problems with the mining law. For instance, if you want to sell more than 10% of a company you must get permission from the government. Also, applications for mining licenses must go through the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources. This has affected investment by foreign investors as they do not want to take on the risk and generally new capital from abroad is not coming. Domestic capital, on the other hand, is increasing due to government support.

After the Soma mine disaster, have safety standards improved at Turkish mining companies?

After the accident everything changed, including the mining law. For example, board members at mining companies are now responsible for accidents. This has meant mine owners are not putting themselves on boards and foreign investors either do not invest or ensure their domestic partner ensures the risk. We are trying to change this aspect of the law.

What are the Foundation’s main priorities going forward?

We are now awaiting the parliamentary and presidential elections in late June 2018, as the government is focused on that now. After the elections, there will be more certainty and we will continue to engage with the government on changing the law. We are also preparing for the next Eurasian International Mineral Processing Congresses in 2019 and 2021.