The Message from Algeria: "I Don't Use Chinese Products"
Published:
Publisher: Alkur Kapı Sistemleri A.Ş.
One morning, a message arrived from an Algerian colleague we had known on social media for years. It was short and blunt: “I don’t use Chinese products.”
We knew each other from a distance; he followed our sector posts, we exchanged the occasional note. Somewhere, clearly, he had seen our products and reached for the keyboard with an assumption. Our reply was just as short: “I never said I was selling you Chinese goods — I sell Turkish-made. If you like, I’ll send the certificates.”
What followed was the interesting part. Our colleague explained that over the years he had bought products at trade fairs sold to him as “Turkish-made”, only to discover their true origin later. He had a fondness for Turks and had shopped on that trust; he had been misled. His anger was not at us but at that deception — we merely happened to be standing on the road.
Making it is not enough — you must prove it
That short exchange sums up the second half of domestic manufacturing, at least as hard as the first: perception. You can make a product in Türkiye, in your own facility, with your own engineering; but as long as the question “do they really make this?” sits in the buyer’s mind, the job is not done. And when imported goods wearing domestic labels have muddied the water, the honest manufacturer’s burden of proof doubles.
Our trial with that burden goes back a long way. When we produced Turkey’s first fully domestic sectional door panel on 29 April 2005, our first task was not to announce it but to document it. When we set out on the electronics side soon after the panel, we walked by the same principle: behind every claim there would be a test, a certificate, a conformity file. Today, every line of our certificate set — from the TÜV NORD-certified high-speed PVC door to the CE-certified dock leveler — is an answer paid in advance to that message from Algeria.
Why this fight belongs to all of us
That day we also thought about something else: this is not our cause alone. Tomorrow, when any manufacturer from Türkiye steps into the world market with any product, the same prejudice will be waiting. Every repetition of “Turks don’t make, they buy and sell” makes life harder for everyone who makes; every company that manufactures with its certificates in hand wears that sentence down a little more. We do our share — and we know it lightens the load of every colleague walking the same road.
The exchange with our Algerian colleague ended well; the certificates went out, the trust was renewed. But the real gain is elsewhere: before writing that same message to the next Turkish manufacturer, he will think twice.
