Hacı Ömer Sabancı

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Hacı Ömer Sabancı (born January 1, 1906 in Kayseri , † February 2, 1966 in Istanbul ) was a semi-literate cotton picker who founded the Sabancı Holding, the second largest company in Turkey. The family is now one of the wealthiest and most influential families in the country.

Life

Hacı Ömer was born in 1906 in Akçakaya, a small village near Kayseri in Central Anatolia. He attended the local village school. After Sabancı lost his father at an early age, he went to Adana in 1920 at the age of thirteen and became a cotton worker. He benefited indirectly from the genocide against the Armenians , because in Adana Hacı Ömer did not participate directly in the government-sponsored takeover of companies belonging to the displaced or exterminated minorities, but he used contacts to wealthy families from Kayseri for the same purpose.

Soon he became a middleman for the cotton farmers and bought himself a cotton scale. With the money he saved in the following years, Sabancı became a cotton merchant and, in 1932, a shareholder in a cotton processing company. In 1943 he became a co-owner of YağSA and in 1946 of MarSA, two producers of vegetable oils and margarine . In 1948, Hacı Ömer Sabancı founded his own bank with Akbank . 1951 followed the founding of Bossa , which became the largest textile company in Turkey. In the years that followed, he founded Oralitsa (1954), a roofing material manufacturing company, and the insurance company Aksigorta (1960).

In 1928 he married Sadıka (1910–1988), with whom he had six sons: İhsan (1931–1979), Sakıp (1933–2004), Hacı (1935–1998), Şevket (* 1936), Erol (* 1938) and Özdemir (1941-1996). Hacı Ömer Sabancı went to Istanbul with his family and bought the famous villa "Atlı Köşk" on the bank of the Bosporus. Today the house houses the Sakıp Sabancı Museum .

Hacı-Ömer-Sabancı Square in Adana, named after him

Sabancı died in 1966 in the Hilton Hotel in Istanbul of complications from diabetes . Shortly after his death in 1967, the Hacı Ömer Sabancı Holding was founded, which united his companies under the umbrella of a holding company. In 1974 the Hacı-Ömer-Sabancı Foundation was established, which is mainly responsible for building schools and sports halls. Today several schools in Turkey are named after him. Sabancı University also bears his name. The Hacı Ömer Sabancı Cultural Center is in Adana.

literature

  • Nimet Arzık: Ak altının ağası: Hacı Ömer Sabancı'nın hayatı . (= Volume 8 of Kültür serisi, Tur yayınları ), Tur Yayınevi, 1980

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Ayşe Buğra: State and Business in Modern Turkey. A Comparative Study. SUNY Press, 1994, p. 82. There it says contradictingly: “The founder of this group, Hacı Ömer Sabancı, was a half illiterate villager from the central Anatolian town of Kayseri”. (sic!) Buğra refers to “Forum, June 15, 1957” (dies., note 70, p. 290).
  2. ↑ Uğur Ümit Üngör, Mehmet Polatel: Confiscation and Destruction. The Young Turk Seizure of Armenian Property , Continuum, London-New York 2011, p. 131 calls him a “cotton picker”.
  3. ↑ a b c d e biography , Haberler, accessed on April 7, 2018
  4. ↑ Uğur Üngör , Mehmet Polatel: Confiscation and Destruction. The Young Turk Seizure of Armenian Property. Bloomsbury Academic, 2011. p. 132.
  5. ^ Website of the Hacı Ömer Sabancı Kültür Merkezi
personal data
SURNAME Sabancı, Hacı Ömer
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Turkish entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH January 1, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Kayseri
DATE OF DEATH 2nd February 1966
Place of death Istanbul