Forwards, Upwards, Westwards!

The rise of the Sabanci family from its roots in an Anatolian village to the heights of the twin glass towers of its Istanbul headquarters is also the story of Turkey's unstoppable shift to the West. A company portrait by Michael Thumann

A mere mortal can't get much closer to heaven than in this office. For Özdemir Sabanci, 9 January 1996 began like any other day: with hot tea and a meeting with a factory manager on the top floor of the twin-towers of the Istanbul-based Sabanci holding. Suddenly, the wood-panelled doors of his office burst open. The secretary couldn't stop the intruders; she was already dead. Shots were fired. Beside the bodies of the company boss and his factory manager, the murderers left the flag of an obscure left-wing revolutionary group.

This was the first and last time that politics forced itself so brutally into the lives of the Turkish industrialist Sabanci family (pronounced 'Sabandshe'). Yet another government had just collapsed and the next one was not yet in place. Politicians in Ankara were battling for power and took every opportunity to top up their personal bank accounts with tax money. An economic crisis was draining the country. In the East, the army was waging war against Kurdish rebels. This was Turkey in 1996: not at all European.

The murders are not forgotten

Today, almost eight years on, this era seems like nothing more than a dark and distant memory. The extended Sabanci family has certainly not forgotten the murders, but it has coped with them. The holding has flourished, as has the entire country. Turkey's economy grew by 5.5 per cent last year. When the EU Commission in Brussels publishes its progress report on candidate countries in early November, it will heap praise on Turkey. The date for the start of Turkey's accession negotiations with the EU is drawing near. Has Turkey gone completely European?

The country may not have, but the Sabanci family certainly has. As pioneers who have set their sights firmly on the West, the members of this family have been running companies in the European Union for many years now. The rise of the family from its roots in an Anatolian village to the heights of the twin glass towers of its Istanbul headquarters is also the story of Turkey's unstoppable shift to the West. The story began 80 years ago with the declaration of the Turkish Republic on 29 October 1923.

At the time, the Levant district of Istanbul, where the twin towers of the Sabanci Empire now reach for the sky, was nothing more than a collection of farmhouses on a meadow. Sakip Sabanci, head of the family, brother of the murder victim and now head of this global corporate empire, is 80 years of age and can afford to look back from time to time.

His autobiography, This Is My Life, has been translated into many languages. Sabanci's large head sits atop a short body. However, the sweep of his arms counteract the impression that he is a small man. If he hadn't ended up the lord of an international company, he could easily have become an entertainer. This is why television loves him and why he loves the cameras. When they focus their lenses on him, he laughs and chats in his Adana accent as if to say 'listen to me; I am a man of the people.' Just like his father, the man who founded this corporate empire.

The story of Haci Ömer Sabanci

Haci Ömer Sabanci started out as a cotton carrier in Adana, a city close to the east Mediterranean coast, in the 1920s. 'From his daily wage of 85 piasters, he spent 25 on food, 10 on bed and saved the remaining 50,' relates Sakip Sabanci. A wooden box served as a safe. These were hard times.

It was at this time that Kemal Atatürk began his long campaign to raise Turkey out of the rubble of the Ottoman Empire. The British were the last occupying force to leave the country. Turkey was declared a Republic in 1923. Kemal abolished the sultanate and followed the French example of separating Church and State. He also introduced a controversial new concept: equality for women. Polygamy was banned and wedding ceremonies had to be conducted by registrars instead of imams.

Kemal Atatürk interpreted the new laws as he saw fit. He had a string of different lady friends, drank - frequently too much - and died of liver cirrhosis in 1938 at the early age of 57. By then, his country had shifted closer to the West than any other Muslim country before it.

Haci Ömer Sabanci, on the other hand, did not drink and always made the most of his time and money. 'He immediately invested the money he had saved in a cotton scales,' says Sakip. Haci Ömer became a merchant and from that day on let others carry the cotton. In 1932, a year before Sakip was born, he bought a stake in a cotton factory. 'This was the start of the Sabanci group story.' In the 1940s two cooking oil factories were added to the business. Haci Ömer discovered rural, backward Turkey as the land of opportunity, albeit the land of somewhat limited opportunity.

On his death, Atatürk did not leave his people a liberal democracy, but a bureaucratic, notoriously well-fortified state that gave its people and companies hardly any room to breathe. All that changed dramatically with the elections in 1950.

The Turks took their revenge on the Kemalistic elite and swept the opposition Democratic Party of national hero Adnan Menderes to power. In the early 1950s, Menderes showered the rural population with promises of a modern life: roads, electricity and schools. 'Government representatives travelled all over Anatolia to talk to the people,' explains Sakip Sabanci. But that did not stop the people flocking to the source of all this modernism: the cities. Like weeds, new, badly-built districts grew up around Istanbul and Ankara. With these districts, consumption and production increased.

'The economy needs stability,' says Group Manager Celal Metin, who is not a member of the Sabanci family. His next sentence is not as slick: 'Turkey has had three eras in which reform-friendly governments have held clear parliamentary majorities: Menderes in the 1950s, Turgut Özal in the 1980s and Tayyip Erdogan today. That has always been good for the economy.' And, of course, for the Sabancis.

In 1948, Haci Ömer established the Akbank so as not to have to ask others for money for new investments. The bank thrived in the 1950s. In 1954, the Bossa textile factory began operations. Haci Ömer, who cared little about his baggy trousers and tousled hair even though he was now the head of a group and no longer a cotton carrier, became one of the most famous business men in the country.

His sons grew up in the traditional Anatolian manner. 'It was dusty and muddy outside our house in Adana, just like it was everywhere else,' recalls Sakip. 'I went about in my bare feet and kept banging my big toe; so much so that it bled.' Things went on in this fashion until Haci Ömer bought a villa in the classical style on the banks of the Bosporus. Today, the villa houses the Sabanci art gallery.

Sakip's toes recovered beneath the magnolia trees on the villa's manicured lawn. In true Anatolian fashion, his parents left nothing in their son's life to chance. They began looking for a wife for him and found the ideal candidate in Sakip's first cousin. The two were married in the garden of the Bossa textile factory. 'It was good that the two families knew each other. That prevents conflicts,' says Sakip. The down side to the arrangement later became apparent.

In 1964, Sakip's wife prematurely gave birth to a daughter whose feet were deformed. Sakip and his wife were distraught and rushed from doctor to doctor. A son was born. He suffered from spastic paralysis. 'It was only at this stage that we realised the terrible consequences for children of a marriage between family members,' says Sakip. While the extended family was still struggling with its Anatolian origins, the company was already thinking about the world beyond the Turkish borders. Their third child was born healthy.

Sabanci – one of the world's largest family businesses

Together with European companies, Sabanci built up new, large companies: the Sasa plastic plant and Kordsa rubber factory. A holding was born. In the 1970s, the economist Turgut Özal joined the Sabanci team fresh from the World Bank in Washington. He was entrusted with the task of organising the complicated management structure of the factories. 'He insisted that the holding should be moved to Istanbul,' remembers Sakip. And it was, 'even though it was very difficult for me.' Sakip now admits that the decision to move West was undoubtedly the right one. Once he had done what he came to do, Özal resigned. He had his sights set on greater goals.

The 1970s went out with a bang. The Soviets had marched into Afghanistan and NATO responded to the missile threat from Moscow with its twin-track decision. In September 1980, the army seized power in Ankara for the third time since 1960 and 1971. Entrepreneurs went into hiding while the generals tried to get the country, which was dogged by attacks to riots, back on its feet. And they succeeded. But the economic crisis was not to be reversed.

The solution came in the form of a former Sabanci employee. To the discontentment of the military and the bureaucratic elite, Turkey elected Özal as its prime minister in 1983. The man with the oversized sunglasses from south-east Anatolia had Turkish, Arabic and Kurdish ancestors and, to top it all, was considered religious. He revolutionised the country. Özal promoted small entrepreneurs in Anatolia and attracted to Turkey high-tech industries that produced everything from computers to jet fighters. In the ten years of his government, the country grew from being an exporter of hazelnuts to one of the largest exporting nations on the world market.

Branches in England and Germany

The name Sabanci was synonymous with this progress. The family set up branches in England and Germany. In 1987, Özal made it clear where he saw the future of his country. He astounded both the European Community and his own people by officially applying for full membership of the EC. But then the Turks wasted precious time. After Özal's death in 1993, governments were replaced as swiftly as the brittle glasses in the country's tearooms. A financial collapse crippled the economy. That is until the elections in November 2002.

For the third time in the history of modern Turkey, the people took their revenge on their civil servants and generals. Of all people, they elected the former Islamist Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whom Kemalistic judges had previously banned for life from holding political office under flimsy pretexts. Erdogan's conservative AKP now rules the country with a two-thirds majority: just how company manager Celal Metin likes it.

This status quo is not so much to the liking of civil servants and military leaders of the Atatürk school. They claim to see the cunningly masked face of the Islamists behind every one of the new government's reforms. This summer, Erdogan pushed two significant reforms through parliament: he reduced the power of the control-addicted military and gave more freedom to the uncontrollable people. Full of determination, the prime minister is now correcting the course set by Atatürk: he is firmly placing his country in the western world.

For Sakip Sabanci, Turkey has long since become a part of Europe, which his country has yearned to join since the 1980s. 'For many years, we have been closely involved with companies like Dresdner Bank, the French BNP, Carrefour and Danone through joint ventures. Last year, 47 per cent of our exports went to the EU,' he says. So why join the EU at all? 'It would eliminate our business risks and make Turkey a irreversibly democratic, progressive country.'

Europe lies high above Istanbul in the twin towers of the Sabanci holding, where tea is served in cups, where the passports of the executives are stamped with permanent visas for the Schengen countries and from where the private Sabanci University and the social Vaksa Foundation are funded. Only a few streets away, small barefoot boys play football in a muddy yard until their big toes bleed. The Sabancis may now live in a different world from these boys, but they started out in exactly the same way.

Michael Thumann

This article was previously published by the German weekly Die Zeit.

Translated from the German by Aingeal Flanagan