Turkish Awakening (14 page)

Turkish consumerism is changing swiftly in big cities, but there is still a culture of face-to-face business that persists, especially in less developed areas. Despite the encroachment of bank loans, online shopping and malls, there is plenty of old-fashioned salesmanship on street corners, and an entrepreneurial energy as obstinate as the hawkers that I have already described. In the UK, the individual salesman spirit has declined almost to extinction. Everything is done via registered companies, and you can price-match online and deliberate as
much as you like before parting with your money. In Turkey, a
carpe diem
attitude prevails, encouraging impulse purchases, and more importantly the chance to sell anything if you have enough enthusiasm and persuasive power to grab people's attention and credulity. Certainly, people shop online, but Turks enjoy living in the moment. More than that, they are comfortable with down-to-earth human interaction in a way that Western Europeans often are not.

One hot Sunday in September, I was on an oppressively crowded ferry to the Prince's Islands from mainland Istanbul, watching a man trying to sell metal spouts (‘patented juice extractors') to an audience of grumpy, sweaty Arab tourists. Remarkably, the initially sceptical crowd showed interest and he had sold at least three spouts that I witnessed by the time we reached land. What I admired about this man was that, faced with the prospect of a potential customer base, albeit on a Sunday, albeit among tourists who probably had no interest in random kitchen apparatus, he seized the opportunity to work the crowd and, against all odds, managed to win himself some customers. In Britain, an embarrassed and cold reception would have awaited him, because it is just not the done thing to buy unorthodox juice extractors from strange men on ferries. Where's the warranty? Where's the instruction manual, where's the receipt?

There is a noticeably laissez-faire attitude to business here, despite all the hustle and bustle. A thin line separates friends and business associates, and there is a great deal of nepotism, which is an alternative way of looking at the culture of sustaining family businesses. Most annoyingly, lax payment is totally normal, although this has become less common since
the days of sky-high interest rates and the corresponding profit one could make simply from sitting on cash for as long as possible. The Russian great-grandfather of a Turkish friend of mine was the tsar's pastry chef in the early twentieth century; he emigrated to Turkey and set up a successful wholesale bakery which, until the 1990s, used to supply some of the main supermarkets in Turkey. Eventually, the family business was sold because they could not cope with the cash-flow problems caused by late payments. Their debtors were companies with multimillion-lira turnovers, but they operated in the same way as any other opportunistic enterprise.

On the upside, Turkish business is very direct. If you want to trade with a Turk, you ring him up or walk into his shop and pitch an offer. My boyfriend sells British fabric to Turkish tailors and it is all very straightforward on the Turkish side – what really matters is money, so the conversation gets straight down to business. When my boyfriend deals with British companies, he must ring the purchasing manager at a certain time on a certain day of the week and an order will depend on the decision of this manager's regional manager. The whole process takes weeks. In Turkey, the same decision would be made within a single conversation, which makes business far more flexible. The lack of protocol can sometimes be a problem, but single traders and small businesses find it liberating.

I do not think it is a coincidence that Italian companies do very well in Turkey, with their Mediterranean adaptability. They manage to win huge contracts here, for example the £1.6 billion third Bosphorus bridge project, which is being carried out by an Italian company called Astaldi who also
built the second bridge and the metro system in Istanbul; in addition Astaldi is beginning work on an enormous hospital complex in Ankara. Turks traditionally see eye to eye with Middle Eastern companies, as is evident from the current shift in business away from the EU and towards the Middle East and North Africa. Turkish construction companies secure multi-billion-dollar projects in countries like Qatar and Saudi Arabia, while these countries are rumoured to invest heavily in Turkey. Rightly or wrongly, people assume that there are important political reasons for this shift, which has been happening over the last ten years or so of AKP rule. Certainly, the AKP are overtly Islamic, and so are the governments of these countries. Commonalities like this do not automatically lead to strong business ties, but they suggest a closeness which in this case is complemented by Turkey's increasing disillusionment with the EU.

Turkey is popular among Arabs for all the reasons I explained in the previous chapter, and Turkish–Arab business is going well. Turks understand the way business is done in the region, so much so that British and American companies are seeking their help when trying to win contracts in the Middle East. I talked to a lady working at the UK Trade and Investment department in the British Consulate whose main mission is to ensure that British and Turkish companies work together in countries like Libya, Iraq, and Turkmenistan to get deals with local businesses.

As she described it, Brits and Turks have complementary strengths and weaknesses. Brits have their global reputations to prop them up; once an agreement is in place, the company and local authorities in, say, Iraq, will honour it because they
respect the aegis of the United Kingdom. But Brits do not understand the way business works in Iraq and rarely get the deal in the first place if left to their own devices. At a meeting with a junior associate of the target company, the British delegation will politely state their terms for the deal, send a follow-up email, and then complain that no email has been sent in return. ‘They haven't responded to our offer. The ball is in their court.' Turks have no such hands-off approach. They wait in person, for hours if necessary, to see the director of the company they are petitioning for the deal. They cajole, persuade, harass. If they are bidding for a construction project and the CEO wants lighting design and landscape gardening thrown into the bargain, the Turks agree without hesitation and make it happen. They are quintessential yes men, impressing their partners with apparent omnipotence, building bridges for future work. The trouble is that Turkey does not have the international political clout that Britain does, and the Iraqi or Turkmen authorities will not treat a Turkish contract with the respect they would afford a British one. To make the most of the strengths of both Turkish and British companies, the British Consulate has started this new initiative to supervise collaborations between the two.

It is less risky for Turks to exploit the Middle Eastern affinity with Turkey on home ground, and the tourism sector has been very responsive to the recent influx of Arabs. Increasing year by year, these tourists come in their millions and head straight to historic sites and museums which celebrate Turkey's romantic Ottoman heritage. In 2012, one opportunistic Turkish entrepreneur decided to test just how keen these tourists were, so he offered them something a bit special:
air. They loved it. In fifty-six museums across the country, proudly branded Turkish and Anatolian air is on sale in tiny cans for sixteen lira (about £5) a pop, and these are now one of the top souvenirs sold in museum shops.

The visionary behind Airstock is a man called Halim Karslı, who obtained separate patents for Turkish and Anatolian air in 2011. He has marketed his air as something between a health product and a nationalist commodity – ‘Whatever happens to the air of the world, let the air of Turkey remain good!' reads the blithe slogan on the can. Having travelled all the way from Morocco or Oman, Arab tourists no doubt feel that they should take home something unique, a physicalised portion of the hallowed atmosphere of Turkey. In shops in Istanbul, there is another product for sale – Istanbul Air, which presumably holds the patent for the polluted air of the sixteen million-strong metropolis. Airstock and Istanbul Air struck me as wonderful evidence for the apparently infinite capacity of the Turkish business mind to make something out of nothing. The sale of air has more than a whiff of the Emperor's New Clothes about it, but that is what makes it so commercially brilliant.

Turks are very skilled advertisers. The zeal of the individual salesman is carried over to the commercial sector, and to less mainstream avenues of marketing. In particular, the Turkish market is remarkably good at adapting to restrictions placed on it by the government, mostly in the forms of taxes or censored advertising. Put simply, Turks can sell anything, no matter what the obstacles.

As I've explained, the mainstream advertising of both alcohol and tobacco has been steadily prohibited throughout the
AKP's decade in power. Combined with increases in taxes that have made cigarettes and alcohol considerably more expensive, the result has been the growth of a hugely successful underground promotion scene in Istanbul in particular. A few years ago, in an attempt to overcome ‘regulatory challenges', alcohol and tobacco brands started approaching individuals on the arts scene in Istanbul to host private parties, sponsored by the brand. These parties target a prime audience of young professionals far more effectively than mainstream advertising. Despite the obvious nature of the sponsoring, the parties still manage to retain an exclusive, glamorous atmosphere, as though the guests are lucky to count themselves part of what is essentially a giant advert – this is mainly down to the genius of the Turkish promoters who organise them.

Zeren Aslan was the particular mastermind of the ‘guerrilla' party I attended. One of the top promoters and social sultans of Istanbul, his parties are legendary. Unusual venue choices like car parks, cellars and rooftops, multimedia entertainment and a network of the best contacts in Istanbul make him a far more valuable asset than any billboard space for clients like Absolut and Jameson Whiskey. Aslan is well aware that the exclusive nature of his parties encourages the elitist image the foreign brands are trying to promote, and we had a frank discussion about his methods in his sleek downtown office. ‘I invite my guests personally by text message, and send out the details of the event only a week before. They are flattered. The party is not to be missed.' It is the sense of modern-day Prohibition-style secrecy, with an added dash of sophistication, that makes the parties so attractive. There is
also no doubt that the relationship between Aslan and the brands is mutually beneficial. He used to earn €35,000 from selling the front cover of his monthly listings magazine to alcohol companies. As this is now illegal, he asks guests at his parties to design their own, which his staff then subtly seed with alcohol or cigarette branding. This scheme both pays for the party and creates the artistic factor that appeals to the typical ‘guerrilla' partygoer, who likes to feel part of a creative community while secretly being rather thrilled at the element of free alcohol.

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.