KEBABBLE The Turkish
lingerie caper By Fazile Zahir
FETHIYE, Turkey - In a country more
usually concerned with questions of outerwear
(headscarves, veils and so on), underwear rarely
gets a look in. What a man or woman chooses to don
beneath his or her clothes is considered a matter
of private interest. But one news story broke with
tradition last week and aired one particular trade
union's dirty linen. The front page of Hurriyet
was pasted with pictures of bras and knickers, all
of which make for good and eye-catching space
fillers in the quiet season when parliament is
closed.
The story revolves around Sevgi
Akbulak who owns and runs the Istanbul-based firm
Sevgi (Love) Lingerie. Finding herself with 13,000
extra brassieres, panties, slips and nightdresses
after a large export order to France, she put the
goods up for sale on the Internet. Among the
interested parties who contacted her
regarding their purchase was
trade union Anatolia Kamu-Sen from Ankara.
The trade union's leaders, Omer Mustafa
Orhun, Murat Firtina, Ozgur Aksoy and Adnan Erden,
corresponded with her and told her that they
intended to buy the lingerie and then give it away
as promotional gifts both to their female members
and to needy women in the Ankara area. Not
recognizing the name of the union, Akbulak
telephoned the Ministry of Labor and asked it to
confirm that such an organization existed and was
active, which it duly affirmed. Reassured, the
smart and cautious business woman shipped the
underwear out and accepted post-dated checks from
the union to the tune of 52,000 liras (more than
US$35,000).
Fifteen days later when the
first check she tried to cash bounced, the shocked
Akbulak began to suspect that she had not been
thorough enough in her checking. Had she delved a
little deeper, she could have learned that the
trade union is a splinter group from the much
larger Kamu-Sen Union and that despite there being
1.5 million civil servants in Turkey (at whom
Anatolia Kamu-Sen focuses its activities), only 38
of them belong to this group.
"When I
couldn't cash the first check, I was horrified. I
had passed the other post-dated checks on to
suppliers to whom I owed money, and all of them
were returned to me. I went immediately to the
address I had been given in Ankara, but the place
was locked up, and there were at least 50
bailiff's notices on the door. When I asked the
apartment concierge about the people who ran the
trade union, I was left reeling. It seems that
under the guise of a trade union these men had
been ripping people off left, right and center,
and at least 20 people per day were coming to look
for them."
Despite Sevgi Hanim's inability
to find the trade union committee members, they
have not been slow in coming forward to the press.
Chairman Omer Mustafa Orhun has responded to
Akbulak's expose of their non-payment with a
legion of excuses. First, he claimed she had
overcharged them for the products, saying that
they were available on the open market for 1 lira,
and that she had invoiced for 6.8 liras. He added
that he had tried to return 6,000 of the items as
they were faulty. Explaining how the men of the
trade union had discovered this, he said: "We
organized a fete at the Mars Bowling Alley in
Ankara and gave away the undergarments as well as
sweaters, shirts and food, but soon after people
started to complain. Bras that were labeled as
Size 90 shrank to Size 30 when they were washed.
The quality was no good."
The trade-union
man claimed that he sent an official warning to
the company from a notary, but the company
responded by saying that the goods were
manufactured for the French market and had been
bulk-purchased from a wholesaler. It said that
"fashion goods could not be returned". Admitting
that the trade union had been unable to honor its
checks, he blamed the current governing party, the
AKP (Party for Justice and Progress), for his
union's disastrous finances, saying that prior to
a demonstration outside AKP party headquarters in
November 2004, the union had 10,800 members and a
monthly income of 100,000 liras. After the union's
anti-government display, the AKP and Memur-Sen
Union put pressure on its members to leave, and
its numbers fell dramatically. Orhun said the
monthly income of the union had fallen
correspondingly until now it only received 2,800
liras per month and was thus unable to honor
checks it had issued.
The public's
reaction to the debacle has been highly cynical.
Some have pointed the finger at Akbulak's firm for
overcharging a trade union trying to do some good,
but others have raised doubts as to whether the
goods were indeed given away. It certainly seems
unlikely that women would complain if a bra they
received as a gift had shrunk in the wash. But
they might well have more to say if they had paid
for the item. Other commentators have questioned
what a union that only had 10,000 or so mainly
male members at its zenith would want with 13,000
bras. If they were genuine gifts, how did they
know what sizes of bras the female members would
want? Almost all agree that two groups of people
tried to make a fast buck off each other and that
the losers are the members of the public who
received the faulty goods.
Of course this
is no consolation for Akbulak, who, despite having
managed to track down and reclaim 2,000 items,
maintains that the incident has ruined her health
and made her contemplate suicide on more than one
occasion. Orhun of the Anatolia Kamu-Sen seems
much more blase about the debts incurred by his
organization, simply saying that "all unions owe
people money".
Minister for Labor Murat
Basesgioglu, whose department offered Akbulak the
words of reassurance on which she made her sales
decision, said the matter had been brought to his
attention. Perhaps this is the time to remind all
our readers of his likely impact on the situation.
We all know that politicians, like underwear,
should be changed often and for the same reasons.
Fazile Zahir is of Turkish
descent, born and brought up in London. She moved
to live in Turkey in 2005 and has been writing
full time since then.
