Page 44 - BNE_magazine_05_2020

44 I Southeast Europe bne May 2020
Everybody’s cottoning on to Turkey’s “native and national” car
ISTANBUL BLOG:
Clare Nuttall in Glasgow
Istanbul-based Revo Capital Management, founded in 2013, has invested Turkish lira (TRY) 14mn (€2mn) in 3D augmented reality startup CY Vision, according to local media reports.
CY Vision is part of Turkey’s “native and national” programme to deliver the country’s first domestically designed and produced car. It is taking responsibility for the project’s hologram technology mission, Cenk Bayrakdar of Revo told business daily Dunya.
Turkey’s “native and national” car project is one of the most crackbrained ways of allocating Turkish public resources ever devised but it has provided income guarantees – given, please note, prior to the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak – for companies without certain ethical constraints.
A better project would be reinventing the wheel in Anatolia before embarking on the road to a “native and national” automobile, but at the end of the day, whatever the project’s contours, there are
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serious question marks at the moment as to whether President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will have the economic wherewithal to allocate public funds to meet the fantasies of his cultured middle-class.
For added comedy value, let’s not forget how a prototype was imported from Italy last December in order to make possible a sensational promotional ceremony to announce the “fully electric” automotive ambitions.
The talk was that the “native and national” car was to hit the highway prior to the next presidential election, but given the corona conundrum and Turkey’s economic mayhem, there’s no guessing when that will be. Don’t rule out next week, or a generation from now should the country go “full regime”.
No engine, Italian body
“Inshallah, we’ll solve the engine issue too in a few years,” Erdogan said at the ceremony.
We just couldn't run that picture big enough.
So, although the “native and national” car lacks an engine, it has an Italian body, the will, all being well, of Allah behind it, and, not long from now, a “holographic assistant” feature, if media reports that imply CY Vision is set to develop it or import it, prove free of error.
Vestel (owned by a prominent devotee of Erdogan, Ahmet Nazif Zorlu), Koc Holding’s Inventram and US-based
Intel Capital also have stakes in CY. Everybody has joined the gang. An Erdogan businessman, an early Turkish Republic bourgeois, a multinational and the harbingers of hefty public finance. The only thing missing – can we stress this enough? – is an engine as Intel could provide the hologram.
In March, Revo Capital Fund II achieved a first closing with over €41mn in capital commitments, and CY was its first investment. The European Bank
for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), EIF, Enerjisa, Finberg, QNB Finansbank and Yildiz Ventures are among the participants in Revo’s second fund.