Turkish Awakening

by Alev Scott

  The huge growth in sponsored parties and festivals has not gone unnoticed by the AKP. In January 2011, a new bylaw made it illegal for those under the age of twenty-four to attend any event sponsored by an alcoholic brand, apparently an attempt to protect the young from free alcohol. This represented, of course, a sizeable percentage of the guest list for these events, and the law was received with widespread derision and outrage before it was repealed several months later. As of June 2013, any public sponsoring whatsoever is out of bounds to alcoholic brands, which means promoters like Aslan have to make absolutely sure their parties cannot be construed as public. Turkish alcohol brands in particular are adept at coming up with ever more inventive promotional methods. Efes Pilsen is at the forefront with its launch of Efes Alkolsüz, a non-alcoholic version, which now allows the company to advertise freely, with massive EFES lettering and the words ‘non-alcoholic’ in tiny print somewhere at the bottom of the advert.

  On the other extreme of the marketing spectrum is the kind of conventional mainstream advertising that is designed to appeal not to the individualistic middle-class ego but to the mass mentality of the average Turkish consumer. One advert in particular caught my eye on the Istanbul metro, which is in some ways more advanced than the London Underground, the Paris Métro or the New York Subway. It may only have three lines (the third having recently opened), but it has slick stations and video advertisements in every carriage and station. From Şişhane to Taksim, bored commuters are treated to an advertisement for Istanbul Halk Ekmek, ‘Istanbul People’s Bread’. This three-minute film features a kaleidoscope of scenes from a huge, shiny bread factory, teeming with white-coated technicians and thousands of identical loaves churned out on conveyor belts. To a Western eye, the obvious mass production is repellent, almost an anti-advert. We are used to products being marketed as handmade, organic, farm-bought, artisan – as wholemeal and wholesome and far from a factory as possible. In Turkey, shiny technology like this is still impressive and attractive, something that attests to the advancement and quality of the brand, and by extension the product. Most of this particular advert is focused on the smooth workings of the gargantuan factory and the digital thermometers of the space-age ovens (billed as ‘the largest in Europe’), rather than on the bread itself. The finished loaves simply whirl by like a utilitarian nightmare. The brand has the seal of the Istanbul Municipality, which means that it is the official bread of Istanbul. In Britain, it would be equivalent to Gregg’s the Bakers teaming up with the City of London and giving itself the moniker ‘The Londoners’ Loaf’.

  The most arresting moment of the advert, however, is saved until the end, when the camera zooms into a map of the world, magnifying an image of Turkey which glows red and turns into the Turkish flag before quickly spreading over the whole globe in a sinister, fiery blur of nationalism. The red globe then merges seamlessly with the emblem of the bread – IHE (Istanbul Halk Ekmek) – associating the brand with Turkey itself. Playing on Turkish national pride is absolutely key to securing the trust and good feeling of a wide consumer base. The marketers at IHE are clearly hoping that when people buy an IHE loaf, they feel they are buying a part of Turkey, becoming a cog in the wheel of the Turkish economy and its world-conquering greatness. The fact that this is a constantly running film on the central metro line shows that big returns are expected on a substantial investment. IHE stands are everywhere in Istanbul; nearly two million loaves are produced every day.

  I used to watch this advert on my way to work in the financial district, where I learned a number of surprising things about the way Turkish businesses work, shortly after arriving in the country. The first lesson was that a successful company based in a shiny skyscraper in the middle of the City might well be employing a significant proportion of its staff off the books, while awarding them big bonuses. When I started working at a rather glamorous publishing company, I was handed an envelope full of cash at the end of my first week and taken for lunch by the editor in chief. A friend of mine works for a business data publication based in Istanbul, which claims to be based in Dubai for tax reasons, and she is paid in cash which comes via an account in the Virgin Islands. What I thought at first was highly dubious tax evasion in my individual company turned out to be pretty widespread policy. I went on to work freelance in other companies – banks, marketing companies – and discovered the real meaning of ‘normal’ business practice here.

  Over forty per cent of Turks are employed off the books. This is because for every employee in Turkey, their employer must pay the equivalent of their salary in tax and social security to the government; an official employee is twice as expensive as an unofficial one. Many companies cannot afford to put people on the books, so employees often accept a slightly higher hourly rate but have to pay their own social security. They will also have no pension or insurance provision, of course, but for many Turks, this is not as terrifying as it might be for a Brit. A pervading belief in kismet (fate) usually means that Turks will chance it whenever necessary: ‘What will be, will be,’ they say. ‘Kismet.’ If God decides to strike them down with flu or redundancy, that is His will, but it is more than a religious belief. It is an attitude: Turks live in the moment.

  The AKP are believers in kismet but they are also believers in tax, so they are trying hard to encourage people to employ or be employed on the books. This usually takes the form of scare tactics; for example, a British consultancy company called WYG, which has a big presence in Turkey, is currently managing a government campaign of this kind, using cartoon leaflets with appealing characters and simple storylines. These characters endure disasters like broken limbs, redundancy and high medical bills all at once. They repent and, guided by the government’s slightly spooky pixelated mascot, sign up for legitimate employment with happy smiles. The end of the story is a flash-forward scene of their cosy, pensioned old age. The leaflet is clearly aimed at the poorer, religious demographic who work for small businesses and are usually the prime candidates for tax evasion as both employers and employees.

  As I have mentioned, there is a problem with underemployment of women in Turkey and the government has recently offered generous incentives to businesses to employ female staff: for example, no tax is paid for female employees for the first year, and after that only fifty per cent of the regular employment tax. There is a similar arrangement for young people, but no one seems to know about these incentives. Either the government has not done enough to spread awareness, or the financial pay-off is not enough to tempt most employers.

  Some incentives for female employment are ridiculous. There is a law allowing a married woman to resign from her job at the request of her husband, within a year of starting work, with a full redundancy package. I found this out by accident when I questioned the puzzling presence of unclaimed mugs in the office kitchen cupboard where I worked. It turned out they belonged to women who used to work at the firm, but who had resigned recently, leaving unloved personal items behind. The law that allowed their paid resignation panders to the conservative tradition of a wife not being encouraged to work or being required to concentrate on child-rearing. The law does not stipulate any kind of checks on women who make this particular resignation request, and so it is possible for a woman to repeatedly start a job, receive training and resign within the year, claiming the redundancy package as her legal right. There is very little a company can realistically do to combat this practice. The sobering downside to an otherwise quite amusing social phenomenon is that it makes companies less open to hiring a female over a male applicant – who knows if she is secretly a Serial Quitter? Better not risk it.

  The macho business environment is being gradually balanced by more female promotions, as I mentioned, but sometimes this is done in a way which feels embarrassingly condescending to someone used to the Western version of equal employment. When I was working freelance at a major investment company, I arrived at the office on Valentine’s Day to an atmosphere of jubilation. Five female employees had
been promoted in honour of this most cherished of dates in the female calendar. Pink posters hung on walls; flowers had been placed on desks. The ladies in the office were all delighted, and of course promotions are great – but something in me felt deeply patronised and resentful at this exaggerated circus of pandering to the female stereotype. I’m sure it was done with the best intentions, and no one was offended but me. I am not sure, however, that J. P. Morgan’s London branch would have reacted well to the Ladies’ Valentine Special Treat.

  The backbone of the Turkish economy is still mass production, despite the growing importance of the financial services and tourism sectors. Turks are brilliant at copying things and producing huge numbers of these copies. There are obvious, practical reasons for the success of this sector in this country – relatively low wages compared to Europe, plenty of workers and space for big factories among other things. Helped by a move towards ‘fast fashion’, Turkey continues to challenge China as the main exporter of mass-produced clothes to Europe, mainly because it is much closer, significantly reducing shipping costs and delivery times. Chinese factories operate on such low profit margins that it is only worth their while to take orders in the thousands of tonnes; Turkey will do smaller orders, which means that high-street chains can order a new season’s worth of stock, receive it on time, and order a different batch a few months later for next season. Dealing with China involves the risk of having thousands of late, outdated stock items sitting in warehouses accruing dust and storage fees, while Turkey is a relatively low-risk business partner. Having said that, only the biggest of Turkish companies succeed in the world of mass production – several of the independent clothes factories in central Istanbul have gone bust in the last few years because competition is so fierce and cash-flow problems are usually fatal.

  Turks are the most enthusiastic followers of international designer brands outside of the Far East, so one of their most successful clothes-related markets is the replica designer industry. Foreign designer items are prohibitively expensive, so there is a roaring trade in what are often called ‘genuine fakes’, good reproductions. While genuine fakes may raise some interesting metaphysical questions in the mind of a native English-speaker, they are straightforwardly real when it comes to hard cash: from the ‘Channel’ perfume bottles sold in street bazaars for two lira (about sixty pence) to the exquisite Mulberry handbag replicas displayed in reputable shops for a comfortable seven hundred lira (£250), the Turkish passion for copying foreign designer brands is ubiquitous. The market value of Turkish-produced fakes has increased from one billion lira (around £320 million) to two billion lira in the last ten years, making it the second biggest counterfeit market after China, and the subject of thousands of lawsuits brought by individual brands as well as Turkey’s long-suffering Registered Brand Association.

  Big brands are the gold standard of quality, dizzyingly desirable, but why pay a fortune when you could have effectively the same product for so much less? In the most chi-chi parts of Istanbul one can find authorised Prada, Louis Vuitton and even Diane von Fürstenberg outlets; far more widespread are shops with names like FAME and LUKS selling pretty much the same products at a fraction of the price. The better the fake, the higher the price, but the discerning Turkish fashionista is still saving several hundred or even thousand lira apiece on good-quality products which are supposedly made in the same Turkish factories which produce the originals. The salesman’s story is that the ‘fakes’ are made after normal working hours in, say, the Prada factory with exactly the same materials and are, to all intents and purposes, the same product. More probably, a single item is bought and copied by a ‘designer’ who studies its details like a clever painter forging a Caravaggio.

  A few months after arriving in Istanbul, I went with my glamorous friend Leyla to a ‘genuine fake’ boutique near the Blue Mosque – the critic’s choice, if you will. As I watched, Leyla ignored the prominently displayed shiny Prada models and moved swiftly to the Bottega Veneta section, where she picked out a classic criss-crossed tote. She opened it, ran a finger across the lining, squinted at the stitches and finally rejected it on the grounds of the size of the inside zipper. The owner, acknowledging a pro, brought out the superior stock, and eventually another bag passed her rigorous scrutiny and was purchased for four hundred lira (£150), about £2,500 less than the original. Leyla wears her bag proudly, without fear of discovery, even when she goes to a Bottega store to check out their new-season ranges in the name of research. The Bottega assistants note her bag and treat her like a queen, hoping for what they fondly imagine will be repeat custom.

  A step above this kind of boutique store is the private seller who operates his business by invitation only. In the manner of an exclusive members-only club, new potential clients must be brought by an existing patron to an arranged viewing of the very best fakes available. Apparently (I am still hopeful of an invite), most of the clients are wealthy Arab women who could easily afford the original but get a thrill from buying several versions of a bag or favourite pair of shoes for the same price as one original purchase. There is quite a trend for this kind of retail tourism, and the net sales of desirable under-the-counter businesses like this probably make up a high percentage of Turkey’s considerable undisclosed income.

  The few Turkish designers who make it to international fame, like Nicole Farhi or Bora Aksu, are well respected and indeed commercially successful, but unfortunately there does not seem to be a huge appetite to follow in their footsteps. Designing copies for mass production is more lucrative in the short term than going to design college, but I think there are more important reasons than mere practicality behind the Turkish appetite for copying existing models and playing it safe.

  The real reason is education. In Turkish schools, children learn a great deal by rote and regurgitate it for big exams in high school. Independent thinking is not encouraged, and creativity consequently suffers. For such a large country, there are not as many designers or inventors as there should be, because Turkish ingenuity is largely focused on new business ideas rather than invention for its own sake. Turkey is one of Europe’s biggest car producers, with massive Renault factories in Bursa and outside Istanbul, but there has been no Turkish-designed car since the demise of the Anadolu marque in 1986. One still sees a few on the streets of Istanbul today but they went down especially well in rural Turkey, where their fibreglass bodywork was eaten ravenously by roaming farm animals.

  I had never quite noticed the correlation between education and industry until I had a conversation with the owner of one of Turkey’s biggest construction companies and got an insight into the Turkish business mind. As we talked, the man who had made billions from building roads and energy plants idly picked up his coffee cup: ‘Look. A Turk picks up this cup and thinks, “I can make this.” And he does – he makes hundreds of thousands, exactly the same. But it does not occur to him to design his own. This is Turkey’s problem.’ I found it both impressive and depressing that a man who had made his money by constructing things on a bigger scale than his competitors had such a clear insight into Turkey’s problem with creativity. He was dazzlingly successful proof of his own theory.

  8

  The Dickensian Model

  Turkey is a developing country – which is easy to forget when you’re living in the cosmopolitan buzz of Istanbul – and it needs to concentrate its resources on building up its economy. That is not done by arts and crafts and individuality but by big industry, banking and construction. Turkish schooling is utilitarian. It prioritises useful, science-based subjects over useless arty subjects and is characterised by box-ticking examinations: ends-based, mechanical and deeply unattractive. There is so much creativity in Turkey, and it is almost always directed towards moneymaking. Many other countries could be charged with the same crime, but I have never before seen it so institutionalised as in Turkey. There is a tendency here to concentrate on the big picture in both business and schooling – overambitious returns on mi
nimum investment, maximum marks from the most efficient cramming. This utilitarian ‘big picture’, while rewarding for the economy, is incredibly short-sighted for society as a whole.

  Governmental and municipal neglect of the supposedly superfluous concerns of the arts and the environment, among other things, has a sense of impending tragedy about it – what will be the point of a flourishing economy when Turkey’s landscape is entirely marred by ugly architecture and rubbish-strewn countryside? Who wants to live in a country thronged with houses expensively but hideously furnished, where people watch glossy soap operas on television, and theatres and libraries stand empty? I taught at a university in Istanbul and saw the products of the Turkish schooling system – grade A, uninspired and uninspiring students; I marched in the Gezi protests and saw these students transformed by a cause – courageous, creative and excited by the future, they were shining examples of what young people should be. The creative output of the protests was astonishing: strangers composed song lyrics together on the streets at night, dancers performed in Gezi Park and people of all ages and backgrounds scrawled poetic graffiti and cartoons on walls and roads everywhere. The contrast made me realise the tragedy of unfulfilled potential in Turkey, and why it is frustrating that a rapidly modernising country is held back by stuffy, outdated institutions and a lack of trust in non-mainstream sectors.