TURKEY’S FIRST SOFTWARE EXPORT

May be you haven’t heard the story of the first software export from Turkey. In the early 1990s, young engineers in Netas was able to export software to teh UK and received payment, which was around $2 million. A few months later, tax officers warned the company to provide the missing customs documents that showed the evidence of a physical transfer of goods to justify the $2 million payment. They believed it was a fictitious transaction and began to investigate it. The engineers then invited the officers to the company and tried to explain what software is and how it was exported through a satellite antenna with a 128kb/s data transfer speed. One asked an officer to hit the enter button and told him that he just helped export $300 worth of software by doing that. Rather than helping it, the officer was embarrassed in taking part in a kind of tax evasion scheme. At the end of a couple of hours, the officers were informed and convinced but noted that the regulation didn’t recognize software exports. So the engineers had to record the software onto two magnetic tapes and give it to a customs broker to register it as the export good. But the broker, expecting couple of trucks full with goods didn’t even bother to go customs to register them, thinking that it was a fictitious transaction. Then the issue was moved to the justice system and court experts prepared a report on whether the software recorded on the tapes was worth $2 million or not. They won the case and the same customs broker this time went to the office to register the tapes. But this time, he had difficulty in writing the unit price of the export. Assuming that a roll had 1,000 meters of tape, he wrote down 2,000 meters of software on the official document.

Three decades later, Turkish entrepreneurs are exporting to almost 220 countries and regions, from drum kit cymbals to digital music players and hair growing products. DHL Express Turkey CEO Claus Lassen remarks that e-commerce is on the rise, posting 44 percent growth in 2019 compared to the previous year. He also noted that exports through air express in May also posted 44% growth when compared with April data. He highlights the resilience and the adaptive capabilities of Turkish entrepreneurs.