Page 56 - TURKRptMay20

pandemic and recommenced operations nine days later.
Several automakers in Turkey—namely ​Honda, Hyundai Assan, Ford
Otosan and Karsan— resumed production on April 20​.
Production is scheduled to resume at the Tofas and Toyota plants in the
first week of May​.
Everybody’s cottoning on to Turkey’s “native and national” car​. CY Vision 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 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.
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.
Revo has investments in 22 ventures, including e-invoicer Foriba (sold to US-based Sovos), Skyatlas (a cloud infrastructure provider sold to Istanbul-based Kartaca) and delivery service application Getir. Revo Capital Fund I took in $66mn.
Last month, Getir was awarded a contract to defy the coronavirus with the delivery of 300,000 Istanbul Governorship food support packages to 50,000 senior citizens. No tender, as per usual, was held and no price information was
56​ TURKEY Country Report​ May 2020 ​ ​www.intellinews.com