How Can a Freelancer Last 10 Years in Turkey? By Avoiding Turkish Companies!
This is a celebration post, not a complaint, although it may seem like one. I am celebrating the end of a decade of freelancing against all odds, my longest job ever.
Today is November 3, 2024, marking ten years since I bid farewell to the corporate world. My corporate career began in August 1995. Later, when I left Turkcell on November 3, 2014, I had spent 19 years in the corporate grind, excluding an 8-month military service. I worked for Turkish companies and French, Finnish, and American firms during this time. The Finnish company was the one I was most satisfied with regarding work culture and valuing employees.
By 2011, I realized that corporate life was not for me and that I couldn’t advance further. After a long preparation period in 2014, I co-founded Diapolis Images with my partner, Gökhan Çelem. I said, “It won’t be easy,” but I thought we could bring our business to a certain level within a year. Of course, things took longer than planned; it took three years to start working with foreign companies before we reached where we are today.
In 2014 and 2015, Gökhan and I visited every agency in Istanbul, from the smallest to the largest. I saw firsthand how difficult it is to survive as a small business based on intellectual power in Turkey. The business life for small creative companies is highly aggressive.
Of course, during this time, we also encountered some genuinely good companies, at least in terms of payment and the projects they gave us (Thank you, Eyedea & Diageo). But one thing is clear: If I had stayed in the Turkish market, I would have either given up or been forced to give up long ago.
So, how did we make it to 10 years? In short, thanks to the internet. Over the years, the proportion of business done over the Internet increased. One project led to another. Projects started coming from abroad, and we, who couldn’t get work from Turkish agencies and companies, began receiving continuous work overseas. We worked with companies we could never have dreamed of working with, sometimes directly and sometimes through international agencies. After ten years, we worked with giants like Peugeot France, Google, Ford Ireland, Pepsico, Unilever, L’Oreal, CocaCola, McDonald’s, Isek Skyr, Gucci, Tektronix, Radisson Blu, Adobe, Grayscale, Lotus, Panasonic, JTI, Marriott, Four Season, Hilton, M.A.C., Eucerin, ZF, and many others. We also created visuals for a few hundred startups. Thanks to Gökhan, we started earning regular income from the stock video business we entered.
I owe my 10-year journey to my partner, Gökhan Çelem, Emre Zorer; my wife, Hande, who supported me even in my most desperate moments and encouraged me to take this difficult step in the first place; Ufuk Sarışen, who set an example for me by taking the same step before me, and to the Turkish advertising agencies and corporate companies that made me stay away from the Turkish market.
