FORUM

Center of Growth

Turkey is developing into a hub for major multinational firms. The heads of three top firms comment on the strengths of running a global operation from Turkey.

BELKİS E. APERGÜN

Starting from April 1, 2011 Coface Turkey became the headquarters for countries in the East Mediterranean and Middle East. Another platform covers Russia and the CIS countries, and there is also an African platform. Turkey was chosen as it has a diverse and capable workforce, and logistically speaking it is in a great place. There are lots of multinational countries that choose Turkey as a hub for the same reason. In general, Turkey has good relations with its neighbors, and this also makes life easier for us to conduct business in those places too. Coface has been in Turkey since the end of 1997, and since the end of 2006 Coface Insurance or “Sigorta” has been operating in the country. Coface is proud to be a part of Turkey’s entrance into credit insurance because before that only Turkish ExIm Bank was dealing with credit insurance for exporters. Coface has helped a lot to establish a credit insurance industry in Turkey, together with Garanti Sigorta, which is now called Eureko. We have in fact, along with the Turkish directorate of insurance, helped to shape the industry.

CİĞDEM ERTEM

Turkey belongs to a sub-region called META: Middle East, Turkey, and Africa. It is under the bigger EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) region. Under EMEA there are three sub-regions, one of them is Europe, the second one is Russia and the CIS, and the third one is META. For some others companies it is classified as MENA, but we have the “T” for Turkey. Also, most of the management for the META region, including the META director, are based in Istanbul. It is our regional headquarters. For Intel, Turkey means lots of things. We think Turkey has some very unique characteristics that make it a big growth country for the IT sector. The first characteristic is its young population. As you know, nearly 60% or 65% of the population is under 32 years of age. We have 18 million to 19 million people within student age, from kindergarten to high school. Secondly, when you look at the economic indicators, all of the analysts are forecasting that Turkey will have the strongest growth among the 12 main emerging countries. This combination signals strong potential. Turkish people like to use cutting-edge technology.

GALYA FRAYMAN MOLINAS

Turkey presents numerous opportunities. It has a dynamic business environment, good quality of talent, a young population, and a growing economy. One of our four Coca-Cola international headquarters is in Istanbul. More than 90 companies are managed from here. Around 15 years ago Turkey ranked 80th among the 206 countries that Coca-Cola operates in. Now it is 13th. There has been huge growth for Coca-Cola in the past 10 years, more than doubling its business in Turkey. Our bottling partner, Coca-Cola İçecek (CCI), is publicly traded on the Istanbul Stock Exchange and is the sixth biggest bottling operation globally in the Coca-Cola system. CCI manages nine other countries other than Turkey, in the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Middle East, and Pakistan. Coca-Cola Turkey is one of the most talent-exporting countries in the Coca-Cola system. We have 46 mid- to senior-level executives outside the country working for the system. We have best practices in a few of areas, including marketing, sales, supply chain, and sustainability.