Kayseri's ladies own many a "first"

"[Hayrünnisa Gül] told us in a visit to the Presidency that she would have been a successful entrepreneur had her husband, now the current President, allowed her," said Gülseren Onan?, head of Women Entrepreneurs Association of Turkey, or KAGİDER last week, addressing women entrepreneurs and the First Lady in central Anatolian province of Kayseri, the hometown province of both Hayrünnisa and Abdullah Gül.

It is no coincidence KAGİDER chose Kayseri to highlight successful businesswomen with provincial backgrounds. Kayseri is a thriving city. Its prosperous businessmen have been described as Islamist Calvinists by some international observers, as the city is also known to be highly conservative. Women are no exception to the city's entrepreneurial spirit, with KAGİDER's event last week featuring inspiring stories of women building businesses from scratch.

Unlike Hayrünnisa Gül, three women from Kayseri did not listen to their husbands and family elders when they tried to prevent them from working. Maybe they have not yet become a first lady, but they all have become flourishing businesswomen.

"It is so hard to be a working woman in Anatolian culture," said Necmiye ?zderici Postaağası, as her first sentence to tell her own story. "Especially if you are from a well-known wealthy family and do not need money. When people heard that I am working they pitied me. But I said I like working, producing something."

The founder of Kaşık-la restaurants in three provinces, Postaağası's story is much more about most women's primary weapon, persuasion of their men, rather than open rebellion.

"I cannot spend time even in my husband's workplace, as it would be regarded as nasty to be there as a woman," she said. Her husband owns one of the greatest automobile brand's sales galleries in Kayseri, where her business started. "I convinced my husband to offer a plate of mantı to those visitors coming to the gallery without making myself seen," she said. Mantı, resembling Italian ravioli, is a traditional food from the Kayseri kitchen. "I never openly object to my husband. I give him the right to decide. But if I want something, I persuade him," said Postaağası who was raised within traditional Anatolian culture. "Year by year I convinced him to destroy the walls of the plaza, I even occupied his own room slowly and now I have a restaurant of 1,000 people in my husband's plaza. We started with a small space to host just 25 people," she said. As she started offering a plate of mantı to visitors, the residents of the organized industrial site, where the family's plaza exists, asked for Postaağası's service of her husband for themselves. And the growth started. Currently the Kaşık-la restaurant in Kayseri is 18 years old and has five branches.The story of Selma Elmacıoğlu is similar to Postaağası, with one difference: She comes from a working class family. She is the first girl in the family to attend university and then work, even though her father did not allow her to study university outside of Kayseri. As a result she went to Erciyes University to study management.

Elmacıoğlu, however, is lucky, despite her husband's objection to start her own business. Her father-in-law, Hayrullah Elmacıoğlu, was her sole support. "'If you want to found a business, go for it. I will persuade my son,' he told me," Sema Elmacıoğlu said, trying to hold back her tears. She founded Elmacıoğlu Textile Company when she was 27 and now produces and exports felt for beds. She was runner up in this year's Garanti Bank's Woman Entrepreneurs Competition.

Daughter of public employees

Berna İlter, the winner of Garanti's competition last year, is the most marginal member in her family. The only daughter of a teacher and a soldier, far from dealing with commerce or finance, İlter chose to deal with commerce contrary to her brothers who became academics."I have always been interested in finance," she said. When her father was appointed to Tatvan, she chose to stay in Kayseri with her relatives and attend Anatolian High School. "My father still cannot sleep at night when I take bank credit," she said. After university, İlter started work in the metal industry, which later opened doors for her to operate for firms on London's metal exchange market. Currently she is the owner of a bed factory and she also exports furniture kitchen goods and steel doors to Africa, where she discovered markets by taking trips on her own. "When I decided to export goods, I looked at the goods produced in Kayseri. There was furniture, cookers and steel door. Like a peddler, I collected all the catalogues of firms and went to Tanzania. My first export was furniture there," she said. All these women are also mothers. Postaağası has three adult daughters who are all working in their mother's business. Elmacıoğlu, has two children. "I raised them in the factory," she said.