Turkish Labor Law
Related Articles
Have you heard of the new TV show ‘BirFİKRİNmiVAR? (Do you have an idea?) It is a weekly program airing on NTV that features entrepreneurs’ start-up ideas. There are trailers of each week’s contestants who vividly demonstrate their first prototypes in front of the jury, who in return challenges them with thought provoking questions. Jury members are Ali Sabancı, Chairman of Pegasus Airlines; Gulden Yılmaz, Co-Chair of Koton Textile and Ömer Kızıl, Deputy Managing Director for Sales and Marketing at Uludağ Beverage.
Interesting ideas come from this diverse group of entrepreneurs aging between mid 20s and late 50s: A dog trainer in his mid 20s from Izmir built Petrar, a web-based platform that unites pet lovers with veterinarians, pet trainers, pet hotels, pet shops and farms. This is an all-in-one network for pet owners to fulfill all the needs of their loved pets. Petrar also works as a social network, where one pet lover who has a labrador could connect with other Labrador owners in the same area. Petrar lets the professional and amateur blend and establish mutually beneficial bonds. The young entrepreneur, Oktay Gülsaçan, has been a 20+ year pet lover and professional dog trainer who saw the need for such uniting platform in the pet sector and acted on it.
Another entrepreneur, who proposed a strong solution to environmental problems, is Ahmet Yılmaz, who invented a rain machine that would be used in dry regions that don’t receive much rain. These dry lands could thereby be cultivated for different crops. He is a 58-year old self employed professional who lives in Bursa.
A third finalist is a restaurateur from Istanbul who invented a seat that heats. He proposed this invention as a solid solution that would let people sit and dine outside even in very cold weather.
These people live in different parts of Turkey, belong to different generations and have different educational and professional backgrounds… What brings them to this TV show?
Their courage, enthusiasm to invent new things, solve problems, belief in themselves and their products…
Entrepreneurship is an underdeveloped field in Turkey. As Turks, from an early age on, we mostly believe that one either has entrepreneurial spirit as an innate characteristic or he doesn’t. To us, it is more of a personal trait than a skill that could be discovered, gained or improved. Another misconception we have on entrepreneurship is that we think generating interesting business ideas would one day turn into lucrative business. We don’t see behind the scenes work of cooking the idea, long hours of developing the product, strategizing on the business plan, building a smart and hard working team…
In many established universities around the world, there are entrepreneurship and innovation centers within the business and technology schools. In these centers, students and staff get together to generate ideas, find alternatives to commercialize these ideas and structure the right model for business. In other words, the long process of turning raw ideas into products, services and business plans are taught in these centers. Their most important mission is linking students with corporations, angel investors and entrepreneurs, who help the business grow faster. Most Ivy League universities in the US fund centers and institutes for entrepreneurship and innovation in order to encourage students to start up unique businesses.
Entrepreneurship has recently become a field to study with the spread of private universities in Turkey. One of the graduate business programmes that focus on entrepreneurship is Özyeğin University. I heard about the Center for Entrepreneurship from my brother-in-law, who is graduating from university in June. More of an entrepreneurial spirit, he is more tempted to start his own business rather than beginning work at the very bottom of the corporate ladder and spending years to climb the steps. He wants to do his own business, start up an innovative small enterprise and be excited about improving his own creation.
Even if he knows what he wants and doesn’t want, there are so many paths to undertake, so many crossroads to decide on which way to go. At this stage, one needs a mentor who’s gone through a similar path or an institution that will guide the way. My brother-in-law feels more inclined on the second option after looking through the entrepreneurship focused MBA programme of Ozyegin University.
I am sure there is a growing young crowd who will venture out their own entrepreneurial adventure with the support of these new programmes.
Ela Erozan Gürsel writes a weekly column named “Değişim Yelpazesi ” on global business trends for Dünya Gazetesi on behalf of Datassist for almost two years. Her feature topics include: green energy; climate change; impacts of financial crisis on companies, sectors and regions; innovative technologies in sciences, human resources and management; social networks transforming business and politics; changing dynamics of marketing and branding.
She also writes articles for international magazines published in Singapore.
Prior to her writing career, she worked at Datassist as a Project Manager in a project that combines human resources and mobile communications with the aim to connect blue-collar workers and employers through mobile phones. Before engaging in this exciting project, she was in pharmaceutical sales working for a multinational company. She graduated from American University, Washington, DC, majoring in International Studies with a concentration on International Business and Europe. She worked in Washington D.C. as an Account Manager at a boutique telemarketing firm that specializes in fund raising and publication renewals. She speaks Turkish, English, French, and Spanish. She currently resides in Singapore with her husband.
