TEXTILE TROUBLES: AN ECONOMIC-LEGAL

By Ethan E. Dinçer

From towels to luxury dresses, there is a good chance the product label will include an iteration of ‘Made in Türkiye.’1 Known for its superb organic cotton, Turkish textiles are a staple of many fashion scenes—from couture to linens. In 2020, even amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, Türkiye was the 7th largest exporter of garments in the world and 3rd largest exporter to Europe, outnumbered only by China and Bangladesh, respectively.2 Türkiye’s prominent position in global fashion manufacturing is due to its geographical proximity to European fashion houses and an increasing availability of both formal and informal labor. Yet, this normative perspective on Turkish fashion manufacturing does not capture the complexities evident in the industry, particularly in the last decade.

To this end, this article serves as a review of the Turkish fashion industry, reconsidering the conditions under which garment workers and the textile industry operate. These include Turkish labor laws, the ethnicization of informal labor over the past decade of the Syrian refugee crisis, and the economic turmoil facing Türkiye brought about by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s rogue economic policies. I end with a brief case study of Trendyol, a rapidly growing, Türkiye-based online e-commerce and fast fashion retailer. I conclude on the increasing complexity for the future of Türkiye’s fashion industry—a future rife with inequality while also saturated with local innovation—calling for an end to the reliance on European fashion firms, and instead increasing support for domestic brands. Unbundling these complex industrial organizations, laws, and economic policies is integral not only in advocating for justice for those exploited by the industry, but also in imagining fashion spaces beyond exploitation.

I. An Economic-Legal History of Türkiye’s Garment Industry

Türkiye is the third largest organic cotton producer in the world, exporting US $8 billion worth of raw materials and $17 billion of ready-made garments in 2017.3 Given the sheer scale of the Turkish cotton industry’s production and exportation primarily to Europe, the state has, over time, implemented various legal systems to protect garment workers and promote sustainable practices. Most of these regulations parallel EU laws, particularly those concerning environmental protection,

1 For the purposes of this article, I have decided to use Türkiye throughout instead of Turkey, to remain aligned with the 3 June 2022 UN statement declaring the official change. While the name change has been interpreted by some as a bandaid for worsening domestic politics (See https://omerjournal.com/2022/03/16/turkey-or-turkiye-the-politics-of-a-name-change/ for more), the use of Türkiye in this article is not a statement or declaration of affiliation with any political motive for the name change.

2 Bennett, Safak Tartanoglu. “Syrian Garment Workers in Turkey: Modern Slavery?” Futures of Work, Feb. 2020. https://futuresofwork.co.uk/2020/02/03/syrian-garment-workers-in-turkeymodern-slavery/ consumer and health protection, food safety, and agriculture.4 These directives have been adopted in tandem with Türkiye’s seemingly perpetual journey to become an EU member-state: Türkiye became an EU candidate country in 1999 and official ascension talks began in 2005, although talks have stalled and ultimately failed since the rise of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to the presidency in 2014.

3 Oral, Elif. “Sustainability Challenges of Fast Fashion: Environmental and Social Impacts of Cotton Growing and the Ready-Made Garment Industry in Turkey.” Yuridika 34 (3), 2019: 444.

The issues with the Turkish fashion industry do not arise from the content of these laws, rather the loose enforcement of them, Elif Oral argues. She highlights that Türkiye has been a party to the International Labor Organization (ILO) since 1932 and continues to follow the rules and regulations established by the organization.5 She uses the 2008 Communique on the Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control in Textiles Industry, a suggestion for managing environmental outputs of major polluting industries, as an example to show the unequal enforcement of certain EU laws surrounding the fashion industry. The Communique is limited to facilities with a capacity of more than ten tons per day, and many textile manufacturers in Türkiye are smaller workshops, meaning they do not have to conform to the EUdictated regulation. Further, larger workshops in Türkiye may reluctantly adhere to regulations due to the high costs of advanced pollution-controlling technology, which are priced based on foreign currencies, a repeated issue with Türkiye’s fluctuating lira value.6 However, these regulations only apply to the manufacturing of products for European-based brands, creating further loopholes for locally produced garments or brands outside of Europe. Oral describes Turkish garment industry labor with inherently flawed enforcement, a landscape that allows suppliers and large cotton producers to evade EU regulations. Her account only covers half of the complex industry, and loopholes in the very construction of Turkish labor laws suggest issues do not only stem from enforcement.

However, the root of these flawed regulations arise from international players themselves. Large brands—most of which are European fashion houses—continue to exploit the Turkish textile economy, which in turn impacts how labor forces are employed. The Business and Human Rights Resource Centre conducted a series of interviews with textile suppliers that formed a 2019 report documenting the supply chain weaknesses that have marginalized labor—particularly Syrian labor— within the Turkish garment industry. The report documents how, as international brands continue to push for larger profits and quicker turnarounds, Turkish suppliers are forced to resort to subcontracting, both within cotton cultivation and garment manufacturing, to either make a profit, as clothes can be made cheaper in noncompliant factories, or to achieve unrealistic turnaround times.7 In addition,

4 Oral, “Sustainability Challenges of Fast Fashion,” 446.

5 Ibid., 449.

6 Ibid., 454.

7 Business & Human Rights Resource Centre. The Price You Pay: How Purchasing Practices Harm Turkey’s Garment Workers. July 2019. https://media.business-humanrights.org/media/ documents/files/Turkey_Purchasing_Practices_Briefing.pdf the report notes how all interviewed Turkish suppliers reflected that international buyers did not change their metrics to reflect the 2019 26% minimum wage rise in Türkiye.8 While the minimum wage grew domestically, since international brands still hold textile suppliers to a foreign currency, the buying margins remained the same. This stance by international brands concretizes suppliers’ reliance on subcontracted labor instead of formal counterparts—an informal sector that is rife with exploitation against Syrian and minority labor. I cover Syrian labor and Türkiye’s economic crises extensively in the next sections.

As illuminated, the most critically vulnerable area of textile manufacturing surrounds the informal sector, especially seasonal, or otherwise temporary, work. A geographic split in Türkiye’s garment industry has caused a gap between labor, mechanization, and industrial development. The majority of Turkish cotton is cultivated and processed in southern provinces, mainly the Aegean coast, Çukurova, and the Southeastern Anatolian regions of Diyarbakir and Gaziantep, part of the Güneydoğu Anadolu Projesi (GAP - Southeastern Anatolia Project) region.9 The GAP project, ongoing for over 40 years, focuses on the lower Euphrates and Tigris basins, with 13 infrastructure projects covering agriculture, hydropower, education, and other industries.10 However, while the GAP project is ongoing, cotton cultivation and processing has not yet reached the industrialized standard of garment production and distribution, which occurs in the major textile cities of Bursa and Istanbul.11 Oral calls this industrialization disparity a “structural impediment [in the industry] that causes cotton cultivation to be dependent on manual labor of seasonal agricultural workers who are mostly employed as unregistered workers”.12 Combined with immense demand from international brands, it is within this structure of the Turkish garment industry that regulations falter: since textiles are distributed by suppliers in Northern Türkiye, international labor regulations from global brands are focused most directly on the middlemen of the supply chain, not the actual producers.13

Under this regime of unregulated work the Turkish fashion industry sees its greatest exploitation as challenging demands, relaxed regulations, and legal loopholes create a dangerous environment for those who need the most protection by the law. This exploitation is compounded by the influx of Syrian refugees over the past decade, which has made the labor market in Southeast Türkiye more competitive as refugees cannot acquire work permits and are forced to pursue informal channels.

8 Business & Human Rights Resource Centre.

9 Ministry of Industry and Technology. The Southeastern Anatolian Project (GAP). http://www. gap.gov.tr/en/what-is-gap-page-1.html.

10 Balat, Mustafa. “Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP) of Turkey and Regional Development Applications.” Energy Exploration & Exploitation, 21 (5-6), 2003: 391.

11 The GAP project has been subject to much controversy surrounding its tangible material benefits. Around 90% of the population living in the GAP region is Kurdish, and testimony has increasingly critiqued the purpose of GAP, with some viewing it as an opportunity to suppress Kurdish economic development under the guise of infrastructure advancement. See https:// www.newsecuritybeat.org/2013/08/great-anatolian-project-water-management-panaceacrisis-multiplier-turkeys-kurds/ for more.

12 Oral, “Sustainability Challenges of Fast Fashion,” 455.

13 See the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre report for a detailed explanation of industry structuring.

Legal loopholes allow unregistered, informal garment workers to be exploited under Turkish labor law by unregulated factories in order to meet international demand. Turkish legislation protects laborers in regards to wages, benefits, and working hours, except under two conditions: if the duration of the employment duration is more than 30 days and if an agricultural business has 50 or fewer workers.14 In an intensive report on child labor laws, the Istanbul-based legal firm Çetinkaya describes:

…labor inspections can only be conducted in workplaces that fall under the scope of the Labor Code, which excludes, inter alia, (i) marine and air transportation works, (ii) agriculture and forestry works that employ less than 50 workers, (iii) handcrafts, (iv) home services, (v) athletes, and (vi) apprentices. As the Turkish Obligations Code (Law no. 6098) [Obligations Code no. 6098 is dated 11 January, 2011]15 governs these types of work activities, children who are employed under these conditions would not be protected by labor inspections. Given that many child workers are employed in seasonal agriculture, which falls under the “agriculture and forestry works” heading above, the lack of inspections creates a significant regulatory gap and fuels the problem of child labor in Turkey.16

While Çetinkaya describes the conditions specifically for child labor, this loophole accounts for any form of labor, allowing small-scale cotton and garment factories to fall out of the jurisdiction of Turkish labor code. Oral notes that 98.2% of textile factories and ready-made garment producers in Türkiye are micro-enterprises or small to medium sized, meaning that the majority of garment workers can be employed informally with relatively sparse jurisdiction in order to meet strict production guidelines while generating profit.17 Not only are garment workers impacted by these loopholes—the saturation of the Turkish fashion industry with micro-enterprises means they can often sneak past international garment labor oversight and certification since they exist as subcontractors for larger suppliers.18 https://wipolex.wipo.int/en/legislation/details/11084

14 Oral, “Sustainability Challenges of Fast Fashion,” 455-6.

15 6098 sayılı Borçlar Kanunu / Turkish Code of Obligations, Law No. 6098 of January 11, 2011.

16 Ozgun, Kemal Altug and Gungordu, Atakan. Child Labor in Turkey and the Need for Human Rights Due Diligence for Corporations. Çetinkaya Law, January 2021. https://www.cetinkaya.com/ insights/child-labor-turkey-need-human-rights-due-diligence-corporations

17 Oral, “Sustainability Challenges of Fast Fashion,” 458-9.

18 Ibid., 459.

Work within Turkish labor regulations is being done by ACT, a Europe-based cooperation between the IndustriALL Global Union and 19 large fashion brands— including well-known giants H&M and Inditex (the conglomerate that owns Zara). While ACT has made specific attempts, including signing a Türkiye-specific memorandum of understanding (MoU) between its partnering brands, the actual legal framing of labor issues in Türkiye illustrate the flawed understanding of on the ground realities. ACT and its signatories pledge to support freedom of association for all garment workers in Turkish factories, specifically advocating for three principles:

1. Workers must be free and able to exercise their right to be unionized and bargain collectively in accordance with ILO Conventions.

2. A joint approach is needed where all participants in global supply chains assume their respective responsibilities in continuing to ensure the respect of the right to freedom of association.

3. ACT members will provide capacity building, including training of managers and workers on freedom of association and collective bargaining.19

Most surprising about the work of ACT is that it only focuses on the right to unions as described by the ILO, which, as Oral notes, Türkiye has been a member of for 90 years. Nowhere in ACT’s MoU do the critical issues of Turkish economic crash, Syrian labor, or informalization of the sector appear. Neither do issues of international demand and the purchasing power of large fashion brands. European labor law activism—which, in the case of ACT, has been co-signed by the largest exploiting brands in the fashion industry—focuses on the wrong issues in the Turkish garment industry: the right to unionize needs to come after principle labor laws are amended and international demand is properly reformed to account for all voices in the sector. This legal landscape shapes the way Turkish manufacturers operate today, molding the industry around a series of exclusions that enable the on-time production of large quantities of garments at the expense of garment workers. Informal labor might be a product of the development gap between cotton processing and textile manufacturing, but ultimately the continued presence of labor exploitation falls upon international fashion demand and the construction of labor laws with specific loopholes to increase international exports and profits. As briefly illustrated, the landscape has become more complicated since the Syrian refugee crisis, producing a Turkish textile industry that has become divided largely along informal/ formal and ethnic lines, producing the conditions for the exploitation of already marginalized communities.

19 Act on Living Wages, Türkiye Freedom of Association Annex. https://actonlivingwages.com/ app/uploads/2022/08/ACT-Tu%CC%88rkiye-FOA-Annex_EN.pdf

II. The Ethnicization of Syrian Refugee Labor in Turkish Fashion20

The Syrian refugee crisis has seen over three million seek protection in Türkiye, making it the largest refugee destination country in the world. Before a controversial migration deal made between the EU and Türkiye in 2017, Syrian refugees had few avenues of pursuing formal employment and often resorted to informal sectors, such as the garment industry. One study finds that up to 650,000 Syrian refugees are employed in the Turkish garment industry.21

The Temiz Giysi Kampanyası (Clean Clothes Campaign Türkiye) has identified major abuses against Syrian refugees at the hands of Turkish garment factories. Syrian refugees are frequently underpaid: Syrian women earn the least in a hierarchy of wages that sees Turkish men at the top, followed by Turkish women, Syrian men, and finally Syrian women and children. Syrian women are paid well under the minimum wage, sometimes even below the hunger limit, as defined by the Confederation of Turkish Trade Unions.22, 23 Further exploitative conditions include the challenges of attaining work permits for Syrians, which in turn makes employer accountability challenging: The Campaign found that the lack of work permits and written contracts means holding factory owners responsible in cases of arbitrary dismissals, delayed payments, or other forms of exploitation is nearly impossible.24 Oral notes an additional layer of legality to this grey space of discrimination; as of 1 January 2018, mediation between an employer and workers became compulsory before a workplace complaint could be taken before the courts.25 For already underpaid Syrians, the absence of formal contracts and mandating solving workplace issues and potential abuses with employers creates a hostile environment that effectively makes Syrians in the Turkish garment industry voiceless.

The increasingly fragmented position of Syrian refugees in Türkiye’s garment

20 For the purposes of aligning the temporal development of fast fashion and e-commerce, this article only focuses on the ethnicization of garment labor for the Syrian refugee population. For years, other ethnic minorities and migrants, including Kurdish, Afghan, Iraqi, and Central Asian communities have been subject to similar labor abuses in a number of industries, including the garment sector. I choose to focus solely on the Syrian case, however, as the combination of legal loopholes, ethnic subjugation, and rapid saturation in the garment industry is crucial to analyze within contexts of global fashion manufacturing and demand.

21 Houerbi, Salma. “Turkey’s fast fashion is rising on the backs of Syrian refugees.” Open Global Rights, Oct. 2019. https://www.openglobalrights.org/turkeys-fast-fashion-is-rising-on-thebacks-of-syrian-refugees

22 Syrian Workers in Turkey’s Garment Industry: Looking Back, Moving Forward. Temiz Giysi Kampanyası, Nov. 2019: 2. http://www.temizgiysi.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/syrianrefugees-in-textile.pdf industry constitutes what Emre Eren Korkmaz calls the ethnicization of the industry. He argues that there is a de facto relationship between the formal and informal Turkish fashion industries that allow Türkiye to be the fashion hub it is. Before the Syrian refugee crisis, Korkmaz argues that formal and informal fashion sectors would shift: when suppliers received large orders from international customers, they could mobilize their contacts in informal workplaces, which temporarily shifted to formal conditions of employment to meet deadlines and regulations. Informal workers became briefly registered until the order was complete, after which they reverted to producing in informal conditions for a largely domestic market.26 However, over the past decade as Syrian labor has fundamentally changed the hierarchy of garment production, Korkmaz notes a more distinct division along ethnic lines between formal and informal sectors. He argues that informal units dismissed Turkish workers, who only accepted such jobs on a temporary basis and were critical of their treatment, and instead shifted to employing primarily Syrian refugees who remained desperate for income without access to work permits.27

23 Oral, “Sustainability Challenges of Fast Fashion,” 460.

24 Temiz Giysi Kampanyası, Syrian Workers in Turkey’s Garment Industry, 2.

25 Oral, “Sustainability Challenges of Fast Fashion,” 462.

Combined with the legal loopholes that allow for exploitation of Syrian workers, the Turkish garment industry became practically cleaved along ethnic lines between formal and informal production.

How can these cycles of exploitation and discrimination be stopped?

Subcontracting makes regulation by the Turkish state or international brands exceedingly difficult as factories employing refugees informally find methods via legal loopholes to continue their practice. On the other hand, the conditions that create exploitation are set by increasing pressure by international brands requiring collections quicker and with smaller margins for error. Salma Houerbi names brands’ “abusive purchasing practices” as the drivers of exploitation in supply chains, an argument that resonates deeply with critiques of the fashion industry writ large, particularly fast fashion. The Turkish garment sector would not see such frantic shifts between formal and informal work identities and the labor fragmentation based on ethnicity had large fashion corporations not pressured suppliers into creating an economy of unregulated subcontracting.

While this perspective offers a pointed critique of international consumerism— what about domestic consumers within Türkiye? The next two sections investigate this question from seemingly diametrically opposed angles: Erdoğan’s rogue economic policies and the rising fast fashion scene within Türkiye.

26 Korkmaz, Emre Eren. “Syrian refugees and the ethnicization of Turkey’s informal garment sector.” Ethical Trading Initiative, 2016. https://www.ethicaltrade.org/blog/syrian-refugeesand-ethnicization-turkeys-informal-garment-sector

27 Korkmaz, “Syrian refugees and the ethnicization of Turkey’s informal garment sector”.

III. Fashion Implications of a Crashing Economy

Türkiye’s economy has been in persistent turmoil for the past few years, rapidly declining since the end of 2021. November and December saw the Turkish lira plummet to a rate of US $1/TRY 16₤, landing at US $1/ TRY 18₤ in August 2022. President Erdoğan’s unorthodox monetary policies can be cited for most of these economic woes. Namely, he has pushed the Turkish Central Bank to cut interest rates in hopes of boosting exports and reducing inflation. Instead, the opposite has happened, and in October 2021, before the winter crisis, inflation was running at 20%, with some estimates listing it at much higher.28 Almost a year later, after continuing with largely similar policies, in July 2022 official inflation hit 79.6%, a 24-year high.29

The economic situation has serious, tangible impacts on nearly everyone’s daily life. The Business of Fashion reports that in 2017, even before the significant worsening of the economy, 12% of Türkiye’s High Net-Worth Individuals departed the country.30 On the fashion side, a 2021 survey by Türkiye’s United Brands Association—which represents 384 brands and over 70,000 domestic stores—showed that more than 50% of those surveyed reported decreased sales by more than a half compared with 2020.31 This comparison is apt given that fashion retailers were already hard-hit by the first round of pandemic lockdowns in 2020. Economic woes have hardly affected brands and retailers as much as normal citizens. A particularly poignant series of interviews in an Üsküdar second-hand market points to the rising unaffordability of second-hand goods. The interviews, published in Turkish in the newspaper Cumhuriyet, illustrates how people are turning to selling their clothes in order to afford food. An example of an elderly man selling his TV to pay off a grandchild’s credit card debt, and people buying appliances and furniture in installments then selling them in cash to be able to survive, highlights the dire situation of Türkiye’s vulnerable. 32

Türkiye’s economic troubles and the Turkish garment industry intersect at this critical point. Brands and retailers, especially those based internationally, are hiking prices to reflect rising inflation, meanwhile many in Türkiye are struggling

28 Hall, Casey. “Turkey’s Economic Crisis Batters Retailers, Boosts Apparel Exports.” Business of Fashion, Dec. 2021. https://www.businessoffashion.com/news/global-markets/turkeyseconomic-crisis-batters-retailers-boosts-apparel-exports/

29 “Turkey’s inflation jumped to 24-year high of 79.6 percent in July.” Al Jazeera, Aug. 2022. https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/8/3/turkeys-inflation-jumped-to-24-year-high-of79-6-percent-in-july

30 Berezhna, Victoria. “Turkey: Troubled, Resilient and Full of Opportunity.” Business of Fashion, Jun. 2018. https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/global-markets/turkeyfashion-retail-troubled-but-full-of-opportunity/

31 Hall, “Turkey’s Economic Crisis Batters Retailers, Boosts Apparel Exports”.

32 Polat, Ali Can. “Zamlar ve kur yurttaşın belini büktü: Ekmek için ceketini satıyor.” Cumhuriyet, Dec. 2021. https://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/ekonomi/zamlar-ve-kur-yurttasinbelini-buktu-ekmek-icin-ceketini-satiyor-1890951 to get by, selling clothes to afford food. Many cannot afford international brands and are instead turning toward local design houses. Yet, local brands purchase raw materials and machinery in international currencies, thereby raising prices, making finding affordable and locally-produced clothing nearly impossible. This picture becomes increasingly complex when considering Türkiye’s large role in the garment manufacturing industry, and the impacts of the economic crisis on marginalized figures within Turkish fashion sectors.

Despite all of this, there has been a notable rise in Turkish e-commerce. No longer relying solely on international distribution giants such as Amazon, Turkish consumers are increasingly buying goods from domestic alternatives. Business of Fashion reports that Türkiye’s predominantly young population—60% of the country’s 80 million are under 35—opens a prime market for e-commerce and online fast fashion retailing.33 Given this rising opportunity for domestic retailing, I investigate Türkiye’s leading e-commerce and fast fashion platform, Trendyol.

IV. Fast Fashion Futures: Trendyol

Founded in 2010 by entrepreneur Demet Mutlu, Trendyol has taken the Turkish market by storm. A Turkish equivalent to the likes of Amazon and Alibaba, the platform carries everything from clothes to electronics to household supplies, and has revolutionized the way Türkiye shops. As of August 2021, Trendyol was valued at US $16.5 billion, with significant financial backing by Alibaba, General Atlantic, and the Qatar Investment Authority, among others.34 Within Türkiye, Trendyol has over 12,000 employees, with an indirect employment of 730,000 through various business partners. According to one of its board members, the Trendyol ‘ecosystem’ partners with various smaller Turkish enterprises and companies to create economic benefits for Türkiye, including contributing to the economic development of Anatolian provinces and increasing women’s participation in the national economy.35 Most recently, Trendyol announced an expansion into the European market, featuring a new website and covering 27 countries, including France, Germany, and the U.K.36 In this capacity, Trendyol hopes to bring primarily Turkish-manufactured products to European consumers under terms established by a Turkish company, unlike European companies that utilize Türkiye as an outsourcing site.

Trendyol adds a complicating factor to the Turkish garment industry, which has

33 Berezhna, “Turkey: Troubled, Resilient and Full of Opportunity”.

34 “Turkey’s Trendyol Raises $1.5 Billion, Valuing It at $16.5 Billion.” Business of Fashion, Aug. 2021. https://www.businessoffashion.com/news/global-markets/turkeys-trendyol-raises-15billion-valuing-it-at-165-billion/

35 “Turkish e-commerce firm Trendyol adds 1,000 jobs in 3 months.” Daily Sabah, Oct. 2020. https://www.dailysabah.com/business/economy/turkish-e-commerce-firm-trendyol-adds1000-jobs-in-3-months been producing en masse for international distributors and brands for generations, and highlights the domestic consumer of fast fashion. Türkiye is a locus of labor for the international fashion and garment industry, compounded recently with the growing preference for organic Turkish cotton and its geographic proximity to Europe. Previous sections have outlined the economic and legal practices that shape Turkish supply chains’ completion of international orders, but Trendyol’s massive growth as a domestic alternative complicates this landscape. As Korkmaz states, many once-formal garment sectors return to informal practices for a domestic market once production for international brands ceases. So, now that a domestically born and driven market for fast fashion has emerged in Trendyol, what are the legal, economic, and political practices that regulate these domestic supply chains? How might garment workers be treated when the pressures of fast fashion come from within Türkiye rather than from abroad?

36“Turkish e-commerce firm adds 1,000 jobs in 3 months,” Daily Sabah.

Currently, little has been revealed about the state of the Turkish fast fashion scene in terms of rapid production times compared to its European counterparts, but it can be assumed that if Trendyol wants to expand into the European market, they would need to maintain a competitive production speed to be successful. Yet, the conversation of Trendyol’s expansion becomes more murky when juxtaposed with their investors.

Trendyol’s investment points towards an orientation away from the massive funders of the West. In mid-2018, the Alibaba group began investing in Trendyol, causing the 5 top investors of the company to then drop out. These included Tiger Global, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Maide Kurttepeli, Emre Kurttepeli, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).37 Of these investors, before Alibaba, Tiger Global and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers together owned 4.8% of Trendyol, with the EBRD owning 14%. In 2018, estimates put Alibaba’s stake in the company at 75%.38 In early 2021, Alibaba invested another $350 million, putting its shares at 86.50%.39 According to a Crunchbase breakdown of Trendyol’s investors, the Qatari Investment Authority, General Atlantic, and the Abu Dhabi Developmental Holding Company (ADQ) also hold shares in the company, although the information has not been confirmed since the last round of Trendyol’s fundraising.40

The exiting of five previously key players upon the arrival of Alibaba speaks to the tension between Western-based groups such as the EBRD and the Chinese-owned giant, yet the expansion into European markets is rather interesting seeing that

37 Ferah, Ahmet Bugra. “Which Trendyol investors exited due to the investment of Alibaba?” Webrazzi, 29 June 2018. https://webrazzi.com/en/2018/06/29/trendyol-investors/

38 Ferah, “Which Trendyol investors exited due to the investment of Alibaba?”, 2018.

39 Yalçın, Fatma. “Trendyol Becomes Turkey’s Most Valuable Company with New Investment from Alibaba”. Doing Business in Turkey, 6 May 2021. https://doingbusinessinturkey.com/ trendyol-becomes-turkeys-most-valuable-company-with-new-investment-from-alibaba/

40 Trendyol Group, Crunchbase. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/trendyol/ company_financials

Trendyol’s main investors, if not all of them, are outside of Europe. Could Trendyol be the way for Alibaba to expand its reach into Europe? While an interesting proposition, it does not answer more pressing questions about Trendyol’s domestic impact on Turkish society.

Looking critically at the state of the Turkish economy and Trendyol, the growing fashion giant represents the intensification of pre-existing forms of exploitation within the Turkish garment industry. The plummeting Turkish lira has meant that international products priced based on foreign currencies are becoming practically unattainable. In a time when many are resorting to second-hand markets and selling their own clothes to survive, Trendyol products are increasingly attractive to Turkish consumers. This leaves Trendyol, which produces and prices domestically, at an advantage to saturate the thinning affordable sector with its own products. Yet, consumer ethics also come into question here—as more and more try to buy sustainably, is avoiding fast fashion even possible for the Turkish consumer economy?

While the concept of fast fashion has been historically predicated on European fashion schedules, emerging market players such as Trendyol intensify the labor exploitation that comes with high demand and turnarounds. In bringing an international and exploitative business to the local level, Trendyol can effectively rule out appeasing international labor standards as implemented by the EU, ILO, and individual brands’ corporate responsibility policies. While domestic brands in Türkiye might have similar labor regulations and goals, the economic situation prioritizes the survival and sustenance of brands. In addition, although international demand has converted garment manufacturers to operating on a part-time informal labor schedule to fit in increased demand, the rise of a domestic fast fashion giant such as Trendyol would effectively eliminate any formal labor practices for domestic garment producers.

The Turkish population is left with increasingly few options for clothes in the current economic crisis, the rise of Trendyol will only further normalize the informal, ethnicized labor practices seen in garment production centers across Türkiye. Trendyol localizes everything from textile sourcing to labor, meaning that they can deliver affordable prices to the struggling Turkish consumer by increasing the exploitative practices in factories based locally. Türkiye’s size is further favorable to Trendyol’s model: goods can be shipped from anywhere in the country overnight, significantly reducing the time it takes for product design, sourcing, manufacturing, and delivery. Yet, many seem to love Trendyol for more than its affordable products and quick shipping—many family members and friends of mine continually comment on the surprisingly good quality of products from Trendyol, a reality not mimicked by clothes from similar fast fashion giants such as Shein or Alibaba itself.

Trendyol has further cemented itself as a cornerstone of Turkish e-commerce by allowing local small businesses and brands to sell on their site. In a similar format to Amazon, small brands can take advantage of the logistics framework Trendyol offers to sell their products in a quick, integrated manner anywhere in Türkiye. Similar sites such as Shopier—a Turkish equivalent to Shopify—exist, however, they do not offer the marketplace advertising benefit that Trendyol does. Furthermore, the Trendyol Group operates Dolap, a Turkish equivalent to the popular second-hand shopping platform Depop. The app-based service is the primary way clothes are recycled and repurposed outside of physical secondhand markets. These elements of Trendyol’s operations offer a lasting question with no concrete answer: while the emergence of the e-commerce giant has domesticized the international fast fashion industry, it also provides a platform for smaller, more sustainable creatives to market their work in an industry and economic situation that means every sale counts.

Where does this leave the future of Turkish fashion writ large? The ethnicization of an already polarized and exploitative garment industry shows little hopes of improving with demand on a seemingly perpetual rise, as exhibited by growing Turkish exports each year. Türkiye’s economy doesn’t seem to be stabilizing either, with the past year’s currency devaluation adding more frustration with Türkiye’s economic conditions. The rise of domestic e-commerce platforms such as Trendyol and Hepsiburada complicates the singular image of European brands relying on Turkish textile production. Previously predictable cycles of formal and informal labor have given way to increasingly exploitative forms of informal labor, throwing into question the rigid classification of formal and informal work as for either the international or domestic markets. These blurred boundaries remind of the shifting fashion industry globally: an increasingly digitized fashion world means that the outputs of traditional brands can be replicated anywhere, at any scale, by altering labor landscapes to match fast fashion production standards. Trendyol’s domination of the Turkish market and rising presence in Europe is a reminder of the exploitative structures and practices enacted behind the scenes in the global fashion industry, and the future of Türkiye’s garment production and consumption remains tethered to worsening economic and political realities for all involved.