2014 SUSTAINABILITY REPORT
Corporate Social Responsibility
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a concept involving the integration of social and environmental criteria into a company’s business activities and the establishment of a voluntarily dialogue between the company and its stakeholders about such matters.
CSR is beneficial not just because it makes a company more competitive in international markets, encourages its employees to be more active in business processes, helps protect the environment, and contributes to the development of civil society collaborations but also because it is an important element of its sustainable development and success in the social arena.
For a company to incorporate CSR into its business strategies not because it is legally required to but because it wants to is regarded as the most ideal approach and the most sustainable way of achieving such beneficial results.
While the Bank engages in a wide range of activities intended both to create communal value and to nurture individual improvement, it gives particular attention to endeavors in the areas of culture, art, sport, and education.
Ziraat Bank designs and conducts enduring social responsibility projects whose aims are to protect cultural values, to contribute to the communal heritage, and to uphold traditions and customs. The Bank regards this as more than just a duty and rather as an outcome of its mission.
Ziraat Bank’s corporate social responsibility activities in 2014 are summarized below.
Turkey’s first museum devoted to banking, the Ziraat Bankası Banking Museum opened its doors to the public on 20 November 1981. Occupying the ceremonial hall of the Bank’s original headquarters building in the Ulus district of Ankara, the museum provides a look at the Bank’s 151-year history.
Besides being an important source of information about Imperial- and Republican-period history, the Ziraat Bankası Banking Museum also houses examples of objects used in the Turkish banking industry together with peerless examples of Turkish art. Also on display is a panoramic view of the progress and development of banking in Turkey.
Guided by its slogan “Through Art For Art”, Ziraat Bank has been displaying its support for art and artists through the systematic projects that it has undertaken throughout its corporate history.
In the 1990s Ziraat Bank increased its support for art by providing new venues for artists and art lovers to come together and opening its Kuğulu, Tünel, and Kızıltan Ulukavak art galleries and the Ömer Nafi Güvenli Exhibition Hall.
The 34 exhibitions that were mounted in the Bank’s Ankara Kuğulu and İstanbul Tünel galleries in 2014 were attended by more than 28 thousand people.
Ziraat Bank is aware of the important role that culture and art play as mirrors of society in efforts to reach audiences and convey messages about social progress and advancement to them.
It is because of this awareness that the Bank has been actively engaged in programs to promote cultural and artistic activities since 1863. Throughout its history Ziraat Bank has acquired precious paintings and sculptures by leading artists of the day and added them to an ever more-distinguished collection.
That collection begins with examples from the early 19th century that bear the historical stamp of Ottoman-period society while embracing its progressive development and continues with others that bear witness to the developmental changes that the arts have gone through ever since, right down to the present day.
The Ziraat Bank Art Collection is a vast treasure-trove of works ranging from Romantic landscapes to Impressionist and Symbolist interpretations, from Expressionist approaches to Cubist explorations, from the bold abstractions of the Paris School to Gestural and Geometrical Abstraction, and from compositions rooted in traditional values and social realities to avant-garde experimentation and the works of Modern and Postmodern artists.
Beside behaving as an exemplar of a conscientious art collector, Ziraat Bank’s commitment to being a pioneer in society’s cultural progress is shown by the way in which it shares the works in its collection with the public through the comprehensive exhibitions that it organizes and through a book that documents the implications and results of informed, proper, sound, and methodically- and systematically-supported collecting that is consistent with artistic criteria.
The Ziraat Bank art collection consists of more than 2,500 works, the majority of which are oil paintings but which also include watercolors, gouaches, pastels, prints, ceramics, and sculptures. The collection continues to be enriched through acquisitions from among works exhibited by artists at Ziraat Bank’s galleries.
A project is currently under way to restore a bank-owned 19th-century building in İstanbul’s Cağaloğlu district. When completed, this structure will serve as the Ziraat Bank Museum of Painting and Sculpture, a venue in which the bank plans to make the works in its collection accessible to art lovers.
Ziraat Bank is the owner of buildings located in Ankara and İstanbul as well as in many other cities that are important in the history of Turkish architecture. The Bank regards and protects these buildings as precious elements of the country’s culture heritage.
Fifty-two of these buildings belonging to the Bank are listed/protected monuments that were erected after 1910 and are still in active use today. Ziraat Bank plays a part in protecting Turkey’s cultural heritage by carrying out maintenance and repair work that is faithful to the structures’ original architectural spirit.
Ziraat Bank has been supporting volleyball as a sport in Turkey for years through the Ziraat Bank Sports Club. The club has launched a campaign to make the sport appealing to children all over the country. In the first stage of this program, the club attracted four hundred children through free-of-charge “volleyball schools” in the ten provinces of Adana, Bartın, Diyarbakır, Eskişehir, Hatay, Kahramanmaraş, Konya, Kocaeli, Mersin, and Tekirdağ.
In the second stage of the program, Ziraat Bank has set its eye on the goal of nurturing volleyball players who are talented enough to wear the national colors through its “Ten National Athletes in Ten Provinces” project.
Ziraat Bank the Turkish Cup name sponsor once again in the 2014/2015 seasonBoth in keeping with its efforts to support sports in general and in recognition of their contributions both to social wellbeing and the Bank’s public face, Ziraat Bank once again served as the Turkish Cup name sponsor for the 2014/2015 season.
Ziraat Bank has been the Turkish Cup name sponsor since the 2009/2010 season and will remain so until the end of the 2016/2017 season.
In the 2014/2015 season, Ziraat Bank continued to sponsor a sports club that has been successfully representing the bank in the Aroma Men’s Premier Volleyball League since the 2007/2008 season.
In 2014 new versions of the bank’s “Shadows” and “Football Machine” TV spots were broadcast.
Under the “Yunus Emre Institute’s 100 Turkish Libraries” project, which was launched in 2012, Ziraat Bank continued to make an important contribution to scholarly research by supporting the establishment of one hundred Turkish libraries in different countries around the world in 2014.
Ziraat Bank also engages in projects whose aim is to ensure that the country’s historical and cultural heritages are handed on intact to future generations. In 2014 the bank supported the “Osmanlı Kent Yıllıklarında Ankara: Salname-i Vilayet-i Ankara” adlı eser ile “Kütahya Atlas” and “Turkish Poets and Poetries of the Century” projects.
Under the “Kids On Vacation/School Under Repairs” project, schools located in government-designated “Priority Developments Regions” undergo repairs and refurbishment. In 2014 Ziraat Bank continued to make an important contribution to the future of the country by fixing up and fitting out its children’s schools.
First introduced in the summer of 2012 with Ziraat Bank support to contribute to the individual and social development of economically deprived children and youths by taking them on trips to interesting places around the country, this program continued in 2013 and 2014.
Ziraat Bank seeks to contribute not just to the growth and development of Turkey’s agriculture and industry but also to sociocultural and economic development as well. In keeping with this aim, in 2014 the Bank once again took part in and supported many different culture & art festivals and other events such as World Food Day, World Environment, and the annual “Golden Pen Awards” ceremony for economics journalists.
