ATAA President's Message

August 19, 2007

A NINE MONTH REPORT: THE THREE C’S

Dear Members of ATAA and Friends:

I hope this letter finds you in good health and happiness.  I am hoping all of you had a very nice summer.  How time flies!  It has been nine months since I have started my presidency.  As the summer comes to an end, I would like to recap the progress of our Association.

As always, you, our members, are the strength, energy and creative spirit of our organization.  I as your President and the ATAA Board of Directors, strive to serve your needs and expectations to continue to build a powerful association for our members and community.  First, I would like to thank you for your confidence and support in our goal to put ATAA back on track.  For those of you who are not members yet or have not renewed your membership, we ask you to join our family.  Please visit our website www.ataa.org  to become a member or renew your membership.   We look forward to creating a strong and growing community, to preserve the legacy of opportunity for the next generation by continuing our culture and heritage that protects our values.

The past nine months have been of challenges, choices and changes for ATAA, its community, members and the Board of Directors. 

Challenges:

ATAA has been given challenging tasks and faced them with strength and courage. 

We are faced with crucial times in the history of Turkey, as well as Turkish-American relations.  No time in history has Turkey and Turkish-American relations faced greater challenges, such as the current Armenian Resolutions and Greek Cypriot Resolutions in Congress, rise in PKK terror, and the terrible situation of Iraqi Turkmen.  ATAA’s leadership role as the flagship Association in representing Component Associations, its membership and anyone who realized who we were for centuries are effected by both inside and outside forces.

At the time I took over my Presidency, ATAA had suffered in past recent years due to erosion in adherence to By-Laws as well as our operating procedures.  We were left with no funds for the organization and only one staff member.

Before my Presidency, a dispute had aroused regarding the conduct, validity, and outcome of the elections in the fall of 2006 to elect new officers to serve on the Board of Directors.  Furthermore, significant procedural irregularities occurred with respect to the annual meeting of ATAA’s Assembly of Delegates.  Although we received much valued support and positive feedback from most of you, a handful of people decided to subject us with unfounded lies, accusations, attacks and criticism to intimidate us to follow their unethical ways.

The Board of Trustee’s Chair petitioned and called a meeting on February 24th and elected the “Interim Board of Directors”.  As you know this meeting was invalid under the ATAA’s bylaws as verified by our legal counsel, Miles & Stockbridge in its legal memorandum. Many of you accordingly and appropriately ignored this fictional and adversarial entity.

Then we were hit with a frivolous and malicious lawsuit by persons who wanted to invalidate votes, remove elected officers, and install officers they prefer.  Be assured that we will rigorously defend against this lawsuit as well as pursue any available counter claims to protect your organization.

Choices:

We made the choice of putting ATAA back on track, by using already established sound values and principles of the foundation of ATAA’s mission and purpose.  We dedicated our efforts to function as an exemplary organization and further our mission. 

We made the choice of being objective, transparent, constructive and consistent with our Bylaws, Washington DC non-profit laws and the Roberts Rules of Order.  We made sure that all our actions were properly and ethically executed.

Despite our challenges we faced among our own community,  we made the choice of maintaining our programs and continuing our mission of education and advocacy during the challenging times for the Turkish American community in the United States.

To prove to our community of our objectivity and democracy and to resolve all lingering disputes from the previous two elections, we made the choice to carry out new elections with strict adherence to the ATAA Bylaws with the help of our legal counsel.  The results showed the memberships confidence in us.  The elections were completed in early June.

Changes:

With the limited sources and many challenges, ATAA has accomplished much.  For the changes, let me mention a few:

We redesigned our website.  We hope our web site will make it easy for you to find the information you need.  We will also have a special, for members only section that you will be able to get in with a pass code.  Please visit our website at www.ataa.org and let us know if you have suggestions on any changes you would like to see.

We have changed our accounting procedures to make it more efficient for our Board of Directors and members and to be a more transparent and compliant organization.                

We have spent an enormous amount of time putting a few strategic plans for ATAA, including the Public Outreach Plan and our two year Strategic Plan. If you need detailed copies of these plans, please feel free to call the office and we will forward them to you. 

Using these two plans, we have set up committees to improve our operations, mission and goals.  With these plans we will be setting systems in place for ATAA to be a more compliant and transparent 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.  With our committees, we will be able to involve more people in our plans and accomplish much more.  Please see attached the list of our committees and let us know which ones you may be interested in working on.

We had many events each month to continue our mission of education and advocacy.  Attached please find a list of the events.  If you go into our website at www.ataa.org you will find more detail on our events.

We have sent many letters to the media, Congress, Senate on variety of issues.  We had provided the Congress with books, brochures and papers on different topics to educate them on our issues. We have had many GIS’s (Grassroots Information Service) sent to inform our members and the Turkish American Community.  We have had Press Releases sent  to inform the public on various issues. If you visit ATAA website at  www.ataa.org you will find the actual copies of the letters and press releases. 

We have established a FAX CAMPAIGN to make it easy for all of you to voice your objections to Congressional members.  This is a free service to our community, sponsored by the Turkish Coalition of America, to send a fax to your members in Congress.  Please visit the website at capwiz.com/tca/home/ to utilize this.  

We have just hired another staff member as the Grassroots Coordinator to accomplish our plans for our Public Outreach Strategic Project.  This person will start in September and will concentrate on:

1. Working with our Component Associations.

2. Help build an extensive database of Turkish Americans.

3. Coordinate the efforts of local advocates on issues and events at the federal level. 

4. Identify, cultivate and place qualified Turkish Americans in local and federal legislative internship programs.

5. Coordinate tours of educational programs and speakers.

6.  An E-Resource Center of books, pamphlets, position papers that provide current, accurate and interesting information and prospective on Turkish Culture and history, as well as the various issues that effect U.S.-Turkish relations.

7. An E-Visual Center of video streams and visual presentations that provide current, accurate and interesting information and perspectives on Turkish culture and history, along with the various issues the effect U.S.-Turkish relations.

8. An E-Calendar of Turkish American events nationwide.  The e-calendar will be based on and updated with the input of ATAA component organizations.

9. The GIS News Center which will provide periodic bulletins regarding developments in U.S.-Turkish relations. 

We are preparing for a number of conferences,  which include:

1. A Leadership Conference in Washington DC in October.

2. Turkish American Relations Conference in Las Vegas in January.

3. A Turkish American Relations Conference in Istanbul Turkey in Spring.

We will be hiring an executive director and assistant in the near future to complete a full staff for the ATAA office.

If you have any suggestions we are open to your ideas.  Please remember, we all work as volunteers for our organization.  We challenge the Turkish American Community, including the few who complain that ATAA does not do anything to make the choice of joining us and help to change what you are complaining about.  We have many tasks, and there is much to do.  We hope you will help us by becoming a member, joining our committees so that together we can accomplish all that needs to be done. If you are willing to work hard and play by the rules, you are a part of our family, and we are proud to have you with us.

Challenges, choices and changes…….  just like you in life face every day.  The trick is to take the challenges, make the right choices and make the changes before someone else’s changes catch us unaware and make the choices for us.

We recognize the hard work of those of you that have contributed greatly in many ways to ATAA.  We thank you for your continued support.

Sincerely,

Nurten Ural
ATAA President