Prelude

Labour Day celebrations were stormy at the headquarters of Migros in 1994. The streets of Kadiköy, a middle-class mixed residential and office neighbourhood across the Bosporus from the prestige business district of Istanbul, were blocked with heavy traffic as demonstrators indulged in the routine clashes with police. Reporters on the scene became more enraged at the anarchistic turn of demonstrators, who uprooted flowers in the small parks they passed. The pillage of stores and other capitalist symbols was unusual, and many commentators suggested that this was a reaction to liberalisation and conspicuous consumption. Bad news for retailers such as Migros-Türk. They had just began to develop large-scale retailing and had to be sensitive to social tension, which, if combined with a downturn in the economic cycle, could have halted business growth altogether.

Despite his depressed mood and annoyance with the riot police, who had taken over the entire top floor and roof of his building in order to observe the demonstrators, the general manager, Bülent Özaydinli, was still excited about the future of his company. Despite his worries about social, economic and political disruptions, he was optimistic, and one of his remarks was prescient about Turkey's relations with Europe: ‘With this retail transformation, Turkey is already in Europe even without EU membership.’