Soke//Selcuk/Crisler Foundation

I had a bad night with Turkish tummy, so it made for a difficult day. We were up and ready to leave by about 8:50 as Muharrem’s driver was picking us up at 9:00 and driving us to Soke, where his factory Soktas was located, about an hour and half a way. We arrived at the factory around 10:00 and Muharrem was in a meeting but came out right away to greet us, and welcome us to his office, which is a virtual museum, with artifacts from the area sitting around the walls of his office and cooridoors, some behind class enclosures, some on desks, some decorating the walls. It’s an amazing place, with a 15 food desk dominating the room with a large couch and table in front for people to sit around and relax. He went back briefly, so we were able to sit, relax, and get on line. They he came to talk abit and tell us about the plan. We were going off to Didyma and Miletus, then staying at the Crisler Foundation in Selcuk, a foundation founded in honor of biblical scholar and archaelogist Cobbey Crisler by his wife Janet, a viviacious ball of fire, who sold everything in her Carmel home to come to Selcuk to set up the foundation, dedicated to scholarship, learning, and archaelogy. Muharrem helped her get a building, an abandoned camel barn, then helped her with the building; in fact, the conference room is named after him. Scholars and archaelogists from all over come to study her, to teach, and they invite studetns from all over the world to attend week long seminars. We stayed upstairs, in a lovely room, and had the place to our selves.
Back to the plant, Soktas. Muharrem took us through the plant and it was really a revelation, to see how he takes Egyptian cotton, washes it, dries it, begins to turn it into yarn on huge machines; then once he has yard, it’s sent to other areas to be further refined and check, eventually fed into a machine with a digitial number which combines the various yarns and makes a pattered cloth. The textile industry, a main stay in Turkey from the seventies to nineties is now almost gone, because of China and India. In fact, M. has set up a 40,000,00 dollar plant in India, just outside of Mumbai. He also took us into the design room where art majors, I assume, are coming up with new patterns, new colors, new designs for the cloth. It’s an amazing process to watch and he knows it inside and out. He has also started a dairy farm, of 3000 cows, as he wants to be prepared for the future. In Turkey, a good businessman must be nimble, ready to move in different directions. He wants to keep the factory going, but wants to also not keep all his eggs in one basket. His cloth is the highest quality only, the kind that goes into a 500 dollar shirt. The Gap quality he cannot compete, so he had let that part of the business go. I was impressed by the efficiency of the business, the cleanliness, the professionalism; they even pick up and take home their workers, who work in three shifts. Obviously, the plant is doing well enough and he is probably the main reason, with his intelligence, wit, charm, hard work, and knowledge of working in other cultures. He is a very impressive man, the kind one would have confidence in, whether running a company or a state, actually, though he has no such aspirations, I don’t think.
We then went to Didyma and were impressed by the size of the temple, especially the columns, though today, as I write, I don’t remember much more to discuss. It was a warm day, and our guide was hard to understand, and seemed to go into esoteric kinds of stuff. We spent about an hour there, which was about right, then went off to lunch. I forgot to mention the tourists…at least 20 buses sat outside the temple, filling the sight with gobs of tourists, most seemingly European, or at least that’s how it seemed. We were able to avoid the large groups and wind our way through the temple to whatever interested us. After lunch, we drove to Miletus, which was much more interesting, as it had not only a city but a theater. What was most impressive was various layers of culture that underlie almost every site, starting back perhaps 5000 years ago, moving to the Ionians, perhaps Minoas beore that, then the Hellenistic age, the Romans, the Byzantines, then the Selcuk tribes, and finally the Ottoman empire. Of great interest was a mosque that was being restored right next to Miletus, financed actually by Muharrem. It’s a really interesting mosque, just the right size, with neat surrounding buildings, from a hamam to a medresse. A man, probably the contractor, took us around, let us peak in areas we shouldn’t have, all because we mentioned Muharrem’s name. We then went to Miletus and were most impressed by the theater. We both remember our kids sitting in the kings seats in the orchestra area. It was later in the afternoon, the colors were nice, and it was not too hot.

We then drove back to Soke, where Muharrem was waiting, and his driver took us to the Crisler Foundation, which I mentioned, settled in and came down to a lovely dinner of mezze and Palestinian chicken, with pilav. We spent about an hour and a half eating and talking and it was interesting to hear M’s read on politics. He is not a fan of Erdogan, in fact he went so far as to say he hates. A pretty strong statement.