My niece Ela is seven. Yesterday we were chatting. She said, “my pattern is obvious. First I am skinny, than I put on weight. This is followed by a period of me getting skinny again.”

Like this, the pattern of Erzurum city in eastern Turkey is also evident. The population shrinks at a higher rate than other cities. In 1927, 20 out of every 1000 people in Turkey lived in Erzurum, compared to 16 in Gaziantep. By the end of 1980, the numbers grew even, with shares of 18 in 1000 each. By 2012, Gaziantep outgrew Erzurum, with 25 to 10 people in every 1000. Erzurum shrank to almost the half of Gaziantep’s population, contrary to the pattern in the early years of the republic. Gaziantep came out ahead of Erzurum with the transformation of Turkey in the Turgut Özal era. Erzurum has lost relatively.

This was the pattern in my mind as I was looking at the employment figures on LinkedIn. Having seen the numbers, I think it was  fortunate that Turkcell opened a call center in Erzurum. Without Turkcell, the city would not be able to maintain the place where it is today. I believe that the call center has slowed the outmigration from the city. That’s what LinkedIn figures say.

LinkedIn is a professional social network that opened in 2003. It is in a way the Facebook for professionals. Via LinkedIn you can observe what jobs the graduates of particular universities choose. The service now provides aggregated data, offering a gigantic treasury of information. LinkedIn provides an important service in this age of big data. My colleagues at TEPAV recently ran a search to see what jobs the graduates of Erzurum Atatürk University choose. You want to know the answer? One third of those that are on LinkedIn prefer to stay in Erzurum after graduation. Another third move to Istanbul and the rest disperse throughout Turkey, mainly towards Ankara. So, what do those who stay in Erzurum do for a living? The vast majority work in the call centers of Turkcell, Finansbank, Assist, and Vakıfbank. Some portion of those employed by the Ministry of Health also might be working in the call centers. Hence, the majority work in public posts or call centers opened predominantly by private corporations. Turkcell’s call center, which was built on the saying “home is not where you were born, but where you make a living,”  has opened up new employment possibilities for the youth in Erzurum. And this has slowed down the east to west migration. Indeed, without Turkcell, Erzurum could not have maintained even its place today.

The decision by a private company, Turkcell in this case, to open a call center was a wise step to slow down internal migration. This is in a way the private sector doing what the state has failed to do. I see two points to highlight here. First is that the call center business was highly favorable for Erzurum. I wanted to note this down to help the local administration understand the size of the gold mine on which they are sitting.

Call centers help secondary school and university graduates improve their social skills, equipping them with skills for the services sector and entrepreneurship. About half of the secondary school graduates here continue with a university education. Another half find new jobs within their first year in the call center. All important facts to note down. On the other hand, I don’t tend to believe that call centers are a sort of sweatshop. Rather, these centers expand the corroding set of economic skills of Erzurum, paving the way for new opportunities for the city. They half-open the doors of services-based development in Erzurum. Just mark my words now; I will tell the entire story later.

The second point is Turkcell’s choice of Erzurum in which to locate a new call center. I think the answer is rather simple. You just need to check the fiberoptic cable webs and broadband Internet access in Turkey. The fiberoptic cable web passes by three cities on the east-west axis: Istanbul, Ankara, and Erzurum. Through these points the web is dispersed on the north-south axis. So, these three are the best hubs for Internet connection. Among these, Erzurum offers the lowest cost of settlement per square meter as well as the lowest labor costs. Turkcell’s selection of Erzurum, given the cable infrastructure and the cost advantage, is about profitability. The presence of the cable web in Erzurum thanks to the infrastructure decisions of the state, has been helping Erzurum to widen its set of capabilities. Let me note that Erzurum also is the coldest of these three centers, which makes it a highly convenient location for the datacenters of large corporations, if you ask me.

The state might have not foreseen this when it decided to make the cable infrastructure pass through Erzurum. But Turkcell saw the opportunity there and seized it. The slowing down of migration from the city was an ipso facto outcome. That’s what I started to think having seen the figures. Public decisions might have unexpected outcomes. The rise of the call center sector in Erzurum is one as such, in my opinion.

This commentary was published in Radikal daily on 22.08.2014