I visited recently Isabelle Dupont, a Turkish cosmetics factory in Istanbul. Ibrahim Zengin, the owner of the company is an ambitious man who struggles to promote and distribute his brand and products throughout the world. He now exports his beauty products, which have high quality to Middle East and Europe. His target is to be a world brand. He could not hide his sorrow while promoting his products, which have equal quality with other global brands and taking the market share of popular cosmetics companies in the world. He mentioned the difficulties to sell and the prejudices against Turkish made goods abroad. Nothing could stop him. He also emphasized that people used to laugh at him when he first started his business. People used to say that he would not be able to achieve anything. “Thanks God,” he said finally. “We have reached this point and will hopefully grow better in the future.” I remember the stores when I entered the US and the writing ‘Made in Turkey' inside all textile products. There are huge gaps between prices. It seems like Turkey ended up with being a contract manufacturer despite its ocular success and potential in textile sector. Those who made money in textile are other countries. Why can't Tueky produce its own brands? Why did the Turkish Textile become condemned to be a contract manufacturer? Why does Isabelle Dupont, which manufactures products at global standards have to fight to promote and distribute them? We come across many interesting incidents in the history of Turkish brands. According to the agreement signed after the 1st World War, Germany was now unable to make airplanes. Two countries took advantage from this failure: the Turkish Republic and Soviet Union. The two countries established facilities to produce planes. The Turkish facility was founded in Kayseri. Turkey and Russia then began to produce contemporary airplanes. The plane production in Turkey stopped due to political reasons by those who had been prevented to make easy money by importing airplanes from overseas. Altough they began at the same time, Russia improved its production and became a leader in the aviation industry in the world. What a fortunate coincidence, the day I visited Isabelle Dupont, I watched the Turkish film ‘The Cars of the Revolution' on TV, which was based on a true story. It is the same old story and same old sorrowful end. In the early years of the Republic, a gruop of Turkish engineers worked hard to produce Turkish made automobiles. They worked day and night to bring up an automobile in 130 days, while fighting against those who tried to stop them by saying “Who do you think you are to produce a car?” Later? Because we do not see any Turkish made cars on the streets today, it is not hard to guess the end of the story. When I first said to the Turkish playwright, whose play I then staged on Broadway last October, that I was planning to put the story on stage on Broadway, he laughed at me too. He looked to me like saying “Who do you think we are to stage a show on Broadway?” However, today he made history for being the first Turkish playwright whose show was on stage on Broadway. As if we Turks are divided into two groups, those who are like Ibrahim Zengin, the engineers who made the first automobile and airplanes and those who think that Turkey is too poor and full of pity to have its own brands. It looks like that the second group could never understand Ataturk and his philosophy. They are not only useless for the country, but also try to stop who are beneficial. Maybe we should just say to them the famous words of Diogenes: “Just don't stand in my way, İ would ask for no more beneficence from you…” BM
