Levent Ağaoğlu Exporter, Poet, Writer

October 2023

Since my profession is export, I have been to 33 countries for work. I stayed in Hong Kong for five years. I was always in the export sales department of Şişecam Global Company, where I was, and I was at the forefront.

Mutemet Street, Fatih

In selling Turkish products, I have always acted with this spirit that I acquired from Fatih, the district where I grew up. Since Fatih also gave me a spirit of getting along with people, I have always acted with this spirit in Fatih, where I was born. Fatih has a decree in Bosnia, there will be no discrimination of religion, whether Catholic or Muslim, I have always felt that, I have felt that in China and in Europe . I have been to four continents and I have felt that in all of them. In terms of loving people and serving your country.

Transcripts of Traveller’s Talks

Today is my 40th year in my profession. I started in Mecidiyeköy in 1983. My start was a coincidence. I was doing my master’s degree at Boğaziçi University . I enrolled in Boğaziçi University’s master’s degree program to learn English. I wanted to be an academician. One day, I ran into my friend in the school garden. When my friend said, “Levent, there is such a job”, I said okay, that was the start, I continued for 40 years. I was actually glad that I was not an academician. I traveled the world, I did not just stay in a room like this. I retired in 2012 through SGK, my retirement is on paper, I continue my activities and events in every way, I continue my activities in the style of consultancy, writing, I am a person who likes to be energetic.

I value the concept of wisdom plus leadership, in the sense of wise leadership . In my way of thinking, I constantly think in triangles, because when there is a line, there is a reciprocal movement, it is just a line, let’s say linear, but when there is a triangle, there are angles, there are different perspectives, I find this very valuable.

I formulated it this way; wisdom, leadership, the outside world. The outside world is what feeds both leadership and wisdom. It is your footprint in the outside world, as they say now, carbon footprint.

The person’s own footprint will be there. Last week I went to Balıkesir and gave two conferences there. The eye is stronger than the brain, I was impressed by what I saw there.

In that sense, I act with these triangles. Perspectives in business life are very much based on competition. We are all one person, so sharing is very important, I push competition to the background. Solidarity, cooperation, being together in business processes, for example, Italy had a model, let’s say you produce a product in the production stages, there are ten stages in this production, in Turkey, we do all of this ourselves, we set up a factory, we do all the stages ourselves, we compete with each other.

How do Italians do this? There is a model that comes from the Roman Empire . They divided the production in a certain region, let’s say you are going to produce finished leather from raw hides, there are different stages for this. The producers all specialize in a different part of it, that is, the producers become each other’s suppliers, they do not become competitors, they become perfect in what they do, they do not become competitors, see this is wisdom.

Indeed, wisdom is a model in my mind, it is not a way of thinking that is foreign to us, for example, we now call it innovation , it is a foreign word, not Turkish. This word, which comes from Latin, is not ours. In our first written document, the Bilge Tonyukuk inscription written on stone, wisdom is a title. There is no innovation without wisdom. This has not been talked about yet, everyone says how innovation is done, yes, innovation is done with wisdom , but this sentence has not been formed yet.

In that respect, we should be ourselves, we should go with our own concepts. The concepts used in business life and management are all foreign concepts, American concepts are not even French, French was used in state administration at that time.

We need to think about ourselves in these concepts, then we will have drawn our own path, we have a path, there is no other nation in the world, let’s say an 8000 km road from one end of Asia to Asia Minor Anatolia , there is a tremendous wealth and accumulation that this brings.

Here is the consultancy that I know, we call it cooperation, pulling back the competition in business life a little and bringing cooperation forward with wisdom. Wisdom is leadership, in fact, they are all united on the basis of the outside world.

The important thing in the process of transition from export to poetry and writing is the eye. If you have that. Exporting was my profession, it was a profession I loved because I loved being with people and that brings you success, because you are outspoken. There was also this thing in exporting, “One Man Show”. When you talk to a customer, you can’t say “let me ask Ahmet, let me ask Ayşe, let me ask Mehmet, let me ask Fatma”. You will have a specialty on your own; Representation. Then you have to be very knowledgeable, the customer will ask you QUESTIONS from right, left, middle and everywhere, you will have to answer them immediately, that is the importance of being complete, that is why I liked this profession.

Because for me there are two values ​​in life: knowledge and love. Those two are very, very important concepts for me.

Regarding my transition to poetry, I wrote my first poem in Hong Kong in 1997. I named my poetry book, which I published in 2022, Levendname , in the style of a great Asian epic, because I was in Hong Kong in 1997 and I stayed there for five years and developed it from the period I stayed there. My grandmother was a poet, I saw on her gravestone the poem she wrote for my grandfather, my grandmother Feleknaz Funda,   my grandfather had passed away before, I saw her. I was shaken, she was my root, my mother also had that poetry, so a person is drawn to their own roots. She came and found me. It walks with generations. Of course, it comes from my mother and grandmother, I was very happy about that, and of course, poetry is something very unique to a person, very special, you reveal yourself subjectively. But that is the feature I like the most about myself, of course I have a researcher personality, but poetry is something else, in other words, the power of art to influence is much greater.

Voiced Poems

My most preferred feature is actually, okay, I was an exporter by profession, but the transition style is like this, I mean poetry is in my essence, my observations are eye. Your eye sees. I love being with the people because it gives you energy, for example, I constantly go and come back by public transportation, people give you energy, people give you energy and these eventually turn into verses.

For example, my friend called me this morning and I had a meeting with him about exporting to South Africa. I give conferences. I have a website booksonturkey.com , I write articles there. I have books that I have written. I have been writing articles on my website for two years, I have added 2000 articles to my website, both in Turkish and English because we do not have an advertisement in English, it is the language of the world. I care about Turkish very much, but that is another issue. We also need to become a world language, I will start an E-book project on the website.

In Turkey, the paper price has increased a lot, books are around 200 TL, right? Then I thought, for example, I wrote this book, when I wrote “Cyprus is the Center of the World”, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk said, “Pay attention to Cyprus”. This is the vision now, if I publish it in English and write “The Center of the World is Cyprus”, if I make sentences and determinations that bring the world together in Cyprus, I think it will attract the attention of the world because after all, Cyprus is an island in the Mediterranean, the center of the world is the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean is the middle of the world, in terms of English books, I have an Indian friend, Indians are strong in e-books and editorial issues. The books will be both Turkish and English, and since the cost of this will be low, there will be no paper because it is available, and it will be more accessible. A friend of mine said to me, “Look, if you are not here -he means your mobile phone- you are not here”. He said, “Don’t assume yourself if you are not in your pocket”.

My Export Travels. 33 countries in 33 years

The year I was in Hong Kong in 1997 is very interesting, it is the beginning of the internet in the world, 35 years have passed. Look, I will tell you a very interesting memory, I am glad it came to my mind, the year is 1998, I attended a conference of Jack Ma , the founder of Ali Baba, as a listener, I like such conferences and meetings, I said what is going on and what is not in the outside world, you know, one of the triangles. Such a short man from China is giving a conference. AliBaba was not AliBaba at that time , it was a startup, it was at a new level in terms of recognition. Americans injected Alibaba into the stock market, the internet started in the world in the first period in 1997.

He started speaking at the conference and the people sitting there were Ericsson and Nokia, the giant companies of that time, in the position of today’s iPhone and Apple. He was speaking standing up, he said you are sharks, there was a presentation in the background, shrimps were flowing on the screen in an active manner.

He said, “Look, we Chinese are like shrimps at the bottom of the sea, we are not sharks like you.” He said, “We are very small, but our smallness and the communication between us creates a very big power,” and he put an end to it.

Now, go back 25 years and see, that guy was a startup and became the number one in the world. Where is Ericcson and where is Nokia, they are now in a very passive position.

Magazines-My Articles

What did I see there, this is the vision. What is vision, it is personal, the man has leadership, wisdom, both, so the outside world. Here is a very important memory.

I went to Balıkesir recently and gave a conference on Tonyukuk to students at the Anatolian High School. Our first writer is on Tonyukuk. When I saw the young people there, I talked to them by asking them questions, I liked it very much, they are very active and lively, I mean I got hopeful, they are labeled as Generation Z. What does Generation Z mean? Z is the last, there is no letter after Z, there is no person, I do not accept that discourse, but it is a divisive discourse, Generation XYZ, what are these? What I can tell the young people, based on my own experience, is struggle, courage, vision, dream. To pursue these, to be constantly dynamic and lively.

My Political Days in Şişli, 1975-1979

There is no question of discouragement. For example, young people go abroad, my daughter is also working abroad, I do not criticize young people who go abroad, they will represent us there, they will have a different life, they should be very open to the outside world, they should watch what is going on and what is going on. Of course, new professions are developing, there are newly developing professions, but there is a handicap, as I said, experts. Now, all professions are experts, at the bottom, experts, in that case, you cannot see the general picture, if you are in a labyrinth, you can get lost, they should not get lost, they should see the general picture, what is going on and what is going on in the world, and two foreign languages ​​are definitely necessary. I was 40 years old, I took private lessons, I learned Chinese in Hong Kong , I spoke, isn’t the important thing to speak, you speak and you can communicate with the people in front of you. Also, they should care a lot about their language, Turkish, they should drop foreign words.

Books by Levent Ağaoğlu

Turkey entered this imitation in 1982, the late Turgut Özal is my idol, he is the father of my profession, he is the person who started exporting in Turkey, but he focused a lot on using foreign words. But there is a time before that, I mean the Turks used French words, German was not used much, but later on English foreign words. Look at the names, look at the names that the Turks took in history, this has changed recently, children are given Turkish names, but Arabic, Persian and even Chinese names were given, this is not nice. Language is a person’s identity, I told this to the youth in Balıkesir. How England became a world leader, it happened with language, it made its language the world language, it did this by dethroning Turkish.

The second is thought, look, there are books on the table today, the British rule the world with their own ideas. Capitalism is a British thought, a system, football is a British system, that is, management and entertainment have all dominated the world with thought. I think we should also pave the way for the dominance of our language and thought.

Speeches, Conferences

I am 65 years old and I have not lost my energy. I was born in 1958 and I always walk around with this energy. If they tell me “hop on and go to South Africa and export there” the next day, I jump on and go.

Conversations with Myself

Our youth should follow the country and the world, develop their own independent ideas, that is, reason. Turks gave us creative intelligence, in fact, means the created. Turks have understood this, they have understood theology, let them think. Let them be themselves, in terms of language, thought, what they do, and also be proud of their identities.

They should follow the country and the world well, develop their own independent ideas, reason, He gave us a creative mind. Yes, they should use that mind. In fact, Turk means created, it is a divine concept after all. They should think constantly and be themselves, in terms of language, thought, and actions. They should also take pride in their identities.

In this sense, Vision is very important, look, I used a foreign word, didn’t I? We actually need to remove these. There is a horizon, in the sense of keeping our horizons wide, in the sense of being open to the world.

250 Years of Tea Enjoyment in Fishavi