Kifas is located in the İvedik Organize Sanayi Bölgeleri of OSTİM, which is considered to be one of the largest industrial parks in the Middle East (the name is an acronym: Middle East Industry and Trade Center). There are 5,000 firms in the area, most of which are factories producing every small to medium-sized piece of equipment that you can think of. Everything from nuts and bolts to tractor parts to building materials to wheelchairs. You don't wear a suit and tie to OSTİM unless you work for the government or are trying to land a contract. This is a place you roll up your sleeves.
If it's not peak rush hour, it takes a little over an hour for me to get across town to Kifas including a metro (subway) ride and two buses. When you emerge from the metro at OSTİM, you are in a sea of hundreds of rough-looking men. If you approach by car or bus you can see hitchhikers trying to find rides in. You also start to hear languages other than Turkish, namely Arabic and Farsi. This is because many low-skilled immigrants work here, most of whom are probably doing so illegally. The cheap cellphone I'm using here doesn't leave me a good way to get pictures and I don't want to be the guy in the crowd of commuters taking pictures. The OSTİM Facebook page has some great pictures of workers.
OSTİM is quite different from the rest of Ankara. The layout was centrally planned, the buildings all look identical, and it reminds me of the former USSR. There is nothing fancy here. It is about 90% men and always noisy, dusty, grimy, busy, and somewhat dangerous. The jobs people are doing are hazardous, without all the Western safety precautions taken. Last February, a factory across from Kifas that housed canisters of various flammable gases exploded, killing over a dozen people and destroying several shops. This is what I can look out the window and see every day, it still looks like this.
This is a picture of Kifas after the explosion, the top floor was completely destroyed. No workers were at Kifas at the time, but the clean-up and emotional blow linger to this day. The "Has Emek" means "Pure Labor," which is the area of OSTİM the factory is located in.
Most of the businesses either contract with local restaurants to cater food to their buildings or to serve their workers lunch. The business next door to Kifas has hired a woman to cook their meals in-house. Every business has tea breaks, that's a welcome part of the day as well. On Fridays, there is usually a fairly large procession to the local mosque for Friday prayers. That's also something you don't see as much of in the rest of Ankara.
I need to put some pictures up of the daily work at Kifas, those will come soon. On a busy day, there is welding, metal-bending, grinding, upholstering, assembling, packing, and more. It's quite a bit different than any factory I've worked in and a world away from the sterile classroom environment I've worked in the last few years. I enjoy the commute.
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