Esteemed stakeholders,

It was with both excitement and pride that, in 2013, Ziraat Bank joined with its stakeholders and celebrated the 150^th anniversary of its founding. 2013 was also a year of change in which we continued to take decisive and courageous steps that are crucial to our Bank’s sustainable future. The Change and Transformation Project that we are conducting intensively with the dedicated efforts of our entire team reached an important stage as the makeover that seeks to set us fully equipped and strongly positioned in global competition began to take hold.

To the more than a hundred projects that we had initiated with our “Together, to a Better Future” and “Together, Toward the Target” slogans, we added our global transformation project in 2014. The keys to our sustainable future summed up in the expression “Together, Further Ahead” have begun to have an enduring impact on our corporate structure and culture.

One of the most comprehensive restructuring projects ever undertaken in the Turkish banking industry, the Ziraat Bank Change and Transformation Project is essentially a corporate sustainability project whose aim is to develop our added-value generation strengths.

Ziraat Bank’s sustainability policy and approach
Reinterpreting sustainability in all of its aspects, in 2014 our Bank formulated and announced a Sustainability Policy in light of the realities of our own day.

As a consequence of our Sustainability Policy, we are focused on extending sustainability, on developing it, and on making it viable throughout our entire value-creation chain.

Ziraat Bank has defined its Sustainability Vision as “To use the unrivaled experience and knowledge that we have built up over a century and a half for the benefit of the economy, the environment, and the community; to produce enduring value for our stakeholders; to be a globally-competitive bank through the principles of sustainable profitability and productivity.”

Through the corporate sustainability practices that it will be introducing under its Sustainability Policy, our Bank seeks to further increase the medium- and long-term leveraging effects created by the Change and Transformation Project. As a consequence of our Sustainability Approach, we are focused on decisively managing our responsibilities in balance with our obligations to the environment and the community. This in turn requires that we engage in a frank, sincere, and continuous dialogue with all of our stakeholders, including our employees.

We will continue to develop and carry out projects seeking to integrate universally accepted sustainability principles into our business model. To that end, our goal is to play an active role in sustainability initiatives at the national and the international levels. We regard collaborating with our stakeholders as an opportunity to increase both our own sustainability capacity as well as sustainability awareness throughout society.

As a natural leader of its sector, Ziraat Bank is committed to playing an active role in shaping the future and to setting new standards for sustainability. It already possesses vast knowledge and experience on this issue that it can share on international platforms. At the same time, we believe that the steps that Ziraat Bank itself takes in the area of corporate sustainability will also encourage many companies in different sectors in our country to do the same and that we can guide them in their efforts.

Sustainability in three stages
We have devised a three-stage plan to take advantage of the leveraging effects that corporate sustainability has on growth. In the first stage, which is the one currently in progress, we have acknowledged compliance with sustainability standards as a factor supporting growth initiatives under our Change and Transformation Project. In addition to the economic sustainability of which we have been mindful since 2012 with the announcement of our Sustainability Policy, we are also continuing our efforts to embrace and improve awareness of sustainability’s environmental and social dimensions as well.

In the second stage, we will embark upon the process of an in-depth internalization of sustainability throughout the Ziraat Bank value-creation chain. All our efforts in this second stage will have two focal points in common: one will be concerned with making increasingly greater use of sustainability criteria in improving effectiveness and productivity in the Bank’s service processes, the other with supporting the propagation of sustainability awareness among customers and all of our other stakeholders. The final stage will consist of an ongoing synthesis in which sustainability is extended, developed, and made viable throughout the entire Ziraat Finance Group. As it completes its global transformation in this third stage, Ziraat Bank will emerge is an integrated service provider capable of taking on its competitors and advancing its presence on every front at the global level.

These three stages of sustainability are in fact a single interlocking, never-ending cycle. What will be important here is the determination, the transparency, the engagement, and the performance that we demonstrate.

Looking ahead
Corporate sustainability practices present us with important opportunities, foremost among which are the contributions they will make to Ziraat Bank’s global competitive strength. Compliance with current international standards will add value on a wide range of fronts from international funding costs to investor relations and it will also reinforce our group’s strength. Another opportunity lying before us is that, thanks to economies of scale, the sustainability projects that we undertake throughout the group will enable us to create much more extensive and enduring value and to share that value with our stakeholders. We regard the employee participation and voluntarism that we expect will be nourished by sustainability practices as yet another opportunity. The development of social responsibility projects that will encourage employee participation and voluntarism will not only strengthen Ziraat Bank’s stance as a role model but will also strengthen our human resources’ sense of identification with the Bank.

The period ahead of us holds out as much the prospect of competition and risk as it does that of opportunity. As one outcome of rising expectations and stakeholders’ rapidly-evolving demands with respect to environmental issues, we regard corporate sustainability as a matter in which there will be competition in all business lines.

For a sustainable future
As it advances towards its goal of being a customer-focused, competitive, strong, high-market-value, and world-integrated bank, Ziraat Bank regards the priorities of a changing and developing world as its own priorities.

Ziraat Bank is a strong and deep-rooted institution with the capacity to properly perceive and interpret sustainability. Our Bank is determined to be a role model and to author best practices by using its strength to foresee trends in markets and competition and to approach and respond to them appropriately. Furthermore as a responsible corporate citizen, Ziraat Bank will also continue its efforts to ensure that sustainability remains just as important a consideration when dealing with environmental and social issues in the future as in the past.

If there are to be sustainable tomorrows then there need to be cooperation, leadership, and action today. In this process, Ziraat Bank will continue to perform the duties incumbent upon it, just as it has always done.

It gives us pleasure to be sharing with you in the form of our first sustainability report, not only the enduring value that we have created as a product of the boundless efforts and exertions of our employees in the course of a century and a half but also our goals for the future.

Thank you for your contributions, your support, and your consideration.

Very truly yours,