Although Turkey depended on the West, a beginning could be made to export products and services from India. The 54th part of a series describing the unknown triumphs and travails of doing international business

On the top floor of the Commestra Building, where we had our offices, there was a company dealing with teleprinters, which they were mostly importing from Germany and doing a turnkey job of installing and servicing them on a regular basis. A young man by name Nabil used to come to our office once in a while for a chat and to have coffee with us.  He used to visit Saudi Arabia and had good connections there and was friendly with a couple of members of the ruling family. My interest was to see if we could push teleprinters from Hindustan Teleprinters made in Madras.
 
We made a small break-through, when they were able to get teleprinter rolls for use, but it was STC which eventually secured the contract for the first consignment of teleprinters from India.  Occasionally, I used to get my telex messages from their office.
 
One such message was a briefing relating to a visit that I should make to cover Turkey.  I was advised that both India and Turkey were in the same league as LDC countries—least developed countries— and the US wanted us to develop and increase our trade, for which some loans or grants were made available.
 
After a brief home work and exchange of messages with the Indian Embassy in Ankara, I went on a visit and planned to cover both the capital and their commercial centre, Istanbul. I spent a few days in Ankara and immediately after my initial discussions with the commercial secretary; he was kind enough to put me in touch with a couple of interested parties in the textile industry. As a matter of practice and to gather information on any country I visited, I made it a point to visit the chamber of commerce and industry, their ministry of trade itself so as to obtain best results.
 
The people were friendly and all the business people I met spoke English, though it was a little difficult to move about in the city where mostly Turkish was spoken. I remembered too that only a few years earlier, I had read about the establishment of RCD—Regional Cooperation and Development—a sort of treaty among Iran, Turkey and Pakistan, which encouraged trade and industry amongst these countries. Iran was surely making progress under the Shah and Turkey too was greatly influenced by Europe and making rapid developments. Unfortunately, Pakistan was more embroiled in internal strife; civilian and military, taking turns to control the country and was hardly making any progress.
 
There was definite interest in setting up textile factories in Turkey. Many businessmen were keen to get connected to Indian fabric makers, but, everyone was keen to set up units on long-term investments in Turkey or coming to terms on joint ventures. Indian textiles were well-known and accepted.
 
After spending a few days in Ankara, I moved on to Istanbul and continued to meet a number of interested parties for products and services. The Turkish people were most westernised and businesslike, but, because of the thrust of offers and services with long-term aids from Western countries, their preference was leaning towards the west; but now, at least on the textile industry, they were ready to switch over to India.
 
Tourism in Turkey was as strongly built as it was in Lebanon. Besides, the Turks working abroad were growing by the day and were hoping to push themselves to become European in character and behaviour. The Turkish labour force abroad remitted huge amount of foreign exchange to the country.
 
Turkey was also secular thanks to the movement that started and Kemal Ataturk brought about symbol of hope and aspiration for the Turkish people. In more ways than one, he was the Mahatma Gandhi for their people.  Though official religion is Islam, the Turks were very secular in character.
 
As a country Turkey had a lot of sites to see; one of the most popular places to visit is the Blue Mosque, which I believe was built in the sixteenth century. One can enjoy long walks in the grand covered bazaar of Istanbul, and if accompanied by a Turkish friend, become a bargain hunter and, of course, not only enjoy watching the belly dancing but eat the Turkish delight, as they have a wide variety of food that one can enjoy.
 
A trip on the Bosporus, the gateway to Istanbul, is yet another unforgettable experience.
 
On the whole, the country offered great potential for export of Indian goods and services. On my return, it took us some three days to prepare my report and two more days to simply type and send them to our head office. Meanwhile, I was able to alert our head office by telex messages on the urgent actions to be taken for the serious and specific enquiries received and within weeks we had a number of senior people from the textile industry actually stopping over at Beirut en route to Turkey.
 
My report on the engineering opportunities for export to Turkey was published as handy reference book, which I was told later that even our associate organization like STC officials used for furthering business development in that country. The encouraging response, as a result of this report, made me proud that I was making some contribution for export development from India.

(AK Ramdas has worked with the Engineering Export Promotion Council of the ministry of commerce and was associated with various committees of the Council. His international career took him to places like Beirut, Kuwait and Dubai at a time when these were small trading outposts. From being the advisor to exporters, he took over the mantle of a trader, travelled far and wide, and switched over to setting up garment factories and then worked in the US. He can be contacted at [email protected].)