I could tell she was a lawyer even before she started talking about her work, for this is how she recounted an anecdote of what someone had said about another topic: “He thinks that … no, my perspective of what he thinks, from what he said, is…”To many readers it will not come as news that the government has been granting work visas with great reluctance, as if each foreign devil was to take away a patch of Turkish independence. The slowdown started two or three years ago.
On one side we have Alpaslan Korkmaz, head of the Investment Support and Promotion Agency of Turkey (ISPAT), working to attract foreign direct investment (FDI), and doing a good job. On another street in Ankara, the work permit office makes life extremely difficult for foreign investors, some of whom like to employ their own people in key positions.
Sometimes the Labor Ministry asks for a copy of the applicant's high school diploma, even though he or she has bachelor's and master's degrees from accredited universities. In some cases a client has said that the old high school no longer exists. In other cases the authorities imply that a Turk can be found to perform the required job.
“Can you imagine telling the vice president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, of a company like Intel, for example, that Ankara refused a work permit because the person studied electrical engineering at school 25 years ago?” the lawyer asked. The idea here is that Turkey has thousands of engineers qualified to do this person's job -- even though it's more business management than technical wizardry.
I wonder how the football clubs manage to hire all those foreign players. Of course, just as football has rules and regulations, so does the Labor Ministry. I looked up the relevant statute and found Law No. 4817 on Foreign Personnel Working Permits, dated Feb. 27, 2003, which includes the definition of ‘key personnel in the scope of the regulation and other special procedures and principles concerning the work permits of key personnel.'
I read in the foreign direct investment (FDI) promotion literature that “provisions stipulated in Article 14, paragraph 1, sub-paragraph (b) of Law No. 4817 will not be applicable to personnel to be employed within the context of this regulation.”
Not being a lawyer, I had to look up that sub-paragraph -- which is “2,” not “b,” -- but anyway: Article 14. Request for working permission or prolongation of working permission is rejected in the following cases:
1. The situation in the business market and developments in the labor life and sector and economic conjuncture changes regarding employment are not appropriate to give working permission.
2. There is a person in the country with the same qualifications for a period of four weeks to perform the applied job.
Here the government is saying that a foreign company may employ a foreign worker even if a Turk could do the same job, that Ankara gives the company this much hiring freedom in order for the managers to feel comfortable investing in Turkey.
My protected source told me that the clerk in charge of the work permit desk admitted that the aim was to refuse as many applications as possible. But who directed that policy? Is this another tentacle of the deep state? If I were that clerk I would hide behind sub-paragraph 1, particularly the part about economic conjuncture changes. That little blanket could cover anything.
Our hostess at the cocktail party said her daughter, in her senior year at an Ivy League university, has announced that she wants to become a stand-up comic. If the young woman wants to work in Turkey, I recommend she find out: Does the clerk at the work permit office sit at her desk, or stand up?
