The Revolutionary Council: Turkish Design Council

The Revolutionary Council : Turkish Design Council

The President of the Turkish Exporters Assembly Oğuz Satıcı excitedly says, "We set out on this path to augment Turkey's competitive power. Our state undermines our competitive power by the direct and indirect taxes it burdens on us. We took too much debt. We squandered our money. Now we make exporters and producers pay for this whereas export is our only way out. The Turkish Design Council is one of the creative solutions we are trying to realize amidst this pickle. We have to increase our competitive power. We have to differentiate our products and services and for this we have to re-design our products, ideas and even the whole society."

There are some works that are recollected by the historical outcomes they produce. They leave such deep marks on processes following them that they go down in history as such. The Turkish Design Council is such an example. The objective is to bring together Turkey's designers, exporters and industrialists for international competition; to make sure that Turkey deals with design as a respectable and strategic matter.

We ask Oğuz Satıcı how this council will contribute to Turkey. He replies to our question with a faint sigh: "Until today, Turkey used to produce goods for the world. By making goods for the global consumption, we learned about quality and productivity. Now we should sell goods to the world. The path that stretches from making goods to selling goods is quite strenuous. You should first design and come up with your difference. This business requires real mobilization. In the same way we engaged in an export mobilization during the time of the late Mr. Özal and succeeded, now we have to engage in a mobilization of design and creation. The Turkish Design Council aims to marshal all Turkey's design power at the maximum level for our exports and industry. When the Council's structure incorporating all design disciplines combines with the right strategic goals, we hope that a crucial energy will come out and this energy will meet the design power needed by our industry and SMEs. It is possible to elevate our exports, approaching the level of 60 billion dollars, to the level of 100 billion dollars without changing the product quantity at all but only by modifying the design structure and sales model."

One cannot help but get excited by the vision of Oğuz Satıcı. The Turkish Design Council is a major infrastructure project. Similarly, it is something that we'll see the results of in the long run. We get a response from designers in return to Oğuz Satıcı's fervor.

Fashion designer Arzu Kaprol starts by saying, "Actually, we're even late! For long, we were in need of an institution assembling all areas of design, racking brains on Turkey's design strategies and undertaking practical activities. Design is now an inter-disciplinary business. There is much that an industrial designer will contribute to a fashion designer, and a fashion designer to a communication designer mutually. I hope that the Turkish Design Council will serve the function of a blender mingling all points of view and opportunities. Turkey must move further than the point it stands at today. However, this does not work out by saying 'let's make branded products and goods, fellas'. For this, urging the country into a cultural atmosphere where its creative resources can flow easily and forming creative industries is a requisite."

At the Foreign Trade Complex in Yenibosna, discussions of the Turkish Design Council Founders meeting are carried out by quite a packed gathering. One representative each from universities giving education on design and from all disciplines of design participated as well as independent designers.

The first Turkish Design Council meeting was coordinated by TİM Deputy Secretary General Seda Lafçı. TİM Secretary General Prof. Emre Alkin, started the meeting with the words, "I open the first gathering of our prospective organization which will do as necessary for Turkey to surpass Italy in the next 10 years". The meetings involve rather intense and at times heated debates. The chairman of the Graphic Designers Profession Organization (GMK) İlhan Bilge said, "This structure should not be an organization for designers but an organization of design. Rather than the problems of its members, it should tackle the problems of design and promote design", and added, "We should avoid a clumsy and slow organization drowning in its own bureaucracy. We should be involved in strategic problems concerning the link between design and industry."

Alpay Er, Industrial Designers Profession Organization (ETMK), chairman of the Istanbul branch, indicates the need to approach the issue cautiously and carefully, as the founders are responsible to history. "As ETMK, we have been dreaming of this for years. That's why we sincerely support TİM in leading this effort. However, we will be working with sensitivity so that the Turkish Design Council will be organized autonomously as a pluralist, transparent structure open to regulation, which would reflect the originality of the design disciplines in Turkey the best; away from the impacts of narrow interest groups and political centers of power. In this way, the Turkish Design Council can become a legitimate, reliable, useful and respectable structure taking its power from Turkish designers."

Istanbul Technical University Industrial Product Design Department Head, Prof. Dr. Nigan Bayazıt is quite hopeful about the Design Council: "The Turkish Design Council is an institution that we have been anticipating for quite a while. Carrying design to the agenda of industry and society will be one of the topmost tasks of the Turkish Design Council to be founded under the leadership of TİM. Besides, the worldwide promotion of Turkish design can only be possible through this council like design institutions doing this job in other countries for many years. Design is at the same time a cultural indication. Countries' material culture is echoed to the world by design. It is a known fact that technology and art come together within cultural integrity. Making Turkish design a brand can only be accomplished by a strong structure assuming this task such as the Turkish Design Council and as a result of great efforts. One of the strongest contributions of this council will certainly be about implanting and diffusing design education and awareness at all levels. A good design education is a compulsory component of technological and economic developments. As much as a good education, design research necessary for new designs will equip the designers of the future with new technologies and modern developments."

Seda Lafçı, responsible for the coordination of the process, informs us that during the process of the council's foundation, discussions centered on whether membership should be institutional or individual. The words of Tamer Müftüoğlu, presiding the meetings of the constitution commission and having had work experience at exporters' unions and professional organizations for years, "What's important is to compromise from the beginning. In such work, the caravan partly gets in shape on the way. One should not forget that the perfect is the biggest enemy of what's good", should not be disregarded.

What about the issue of resources? How will the legal ground and resources for this structure be supplied? The statement of TİM President Oğuz Satıcı on the topic is straightforward. "Turkey must use the limited resources in its hands in the right way now. All kinds of investments we do in design and our designers are profitable investments. Let alone our short-term profit and competition issues, mobilizing the creative resources of this country is a fundamental issue for the formation of a Turkey we yearn for, civilized and in step with change. We will build the necessary resource and groundwork for the Turkish Design Council to be efficient, together with our government and related ministries. On this matter, we're working with both our ministers Mr. Kürşad Tüzmen and Mr. Erkan Mumcu." Oğuz Satıcı also says that they do not view the issue of the Turkish Design Council with short-term pragmatism, in contrast this is a very historical issue for Turkey. "We're actually saying that Turkey's problem is more cultural than economic. Turkey's system of values must be re-structured. Our priorities and sensitivities must adapt to the needs of the changing world. In this respect, design and creativity are the rising values of the millennium we're living".

As Turkey seeks its new place in the world, it asks new questions and looks for answers. The Turkish Design Council is one of the courses of this quest. If it's founded and delivers its promises, its' possibility to contribute to Turkey's transformation and development in a truly "revolutionary" way is not far-flung.

Burhan Özkan
Turkishtime

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