In Praise Of Sole Trading

When I left university, I had no idea what I wanted to do. The plan had originally been to work in a museum, but short stints of doing just that in the vacations had put me right off the idea. Consigned to a basement to inscribe reference numbers on thousands of pieces of clay pipe that must have sat happily without numbers for decades, I soon came to realize that, far from being an extension of the education system as I'd assumed, most museums were actually closed worlds inhabited by people who regarded the public as at best an unwelcome distraction and at worst an outright menace.

That's how I came to find myself spending the first 18 months of my working life as a committee secretary at the Institution for Electrical Engineers, not quite the sort of place one might have expected to find a history graduate. Nor was I the only one. The saving grace of that job was that it had become the repository for many young women in the same situation as me -- wishy-washy arts graduates who hadn't quite had the nous to think through their employment prospects.

The other thing we had in common was that almost all of us had taken it for granted that we would become employees. Only one of us had her eyes set on self-employment, and she later went on to set up a successful restaurant. The rest of us drifted off one by one to jobs in the public sector or in big companies.

One of the things I found most surprising when I moved to Turkey was the vibrant entrepreneurial atmosphere I found here, so unlike that in the UK. I suppose it probably helped that I went to live in a small village whose lifeblood was tourism and that almost all my friends and contacts work in tourism, where self-employment has always been important, even in England. I've always found that atmosphere inspirational even if, as a writer, I only feature on the edges of it.

Then, recently, I read a report on the state of play in developing countries (and for the purposes of this particular report Turkey is still considered to be “developing”). Productivity per head in these countries was low, it said, and one of the reasons for this was the large part that small businesses played in their economies. The way to boost productivity, it asserted, was for governments to do more to encourage large enterprises in these countries.

That set me thinking. I don't suppose one can dispute the figures. However, one could well ask whom all this increased productivity is supposed to benefit. Because what I see amongst my friends is that they and their families are the ones who reap the profit from their efforts. Once their small enterprises get swallowed up into bigger ones, as almost always happens with the most successful, something changes. Suddenly the employees turn into a reluctantly accepted “expense” that must be kept to a minimum at all costs. All the profits start to accrue to a small group of normally already wealthy individuals, the owners of the company.

I know I'm probably coming over all mini-Marx in writing this, but personally I think it will be a sad day when the last of Turkey's sole traders, like the last of its camel trains, is shown the door, even if it is in the name of greater productivity.

Charlotte McPherson is away.

PAT YALE (Cihan/Today's Zaman)