The Textile Specialization Commission established fort he 9th Development Plan made the warning ‘ If the sector is not restructured, carrying along all the economy it will reach the termination point until 2013” In the report prepared by the commission, the 2007-2013 period has been indicated as crucial for the sector and ‘ the sector will either lose its competitive strength day by day and shrink in an uncontrolled manner or it will maintain its leading position in an even stronger manner’ was stated. The report where the main issue was indicated as the increase in imports in textile and ready made clothes, declared “If it goes on there will be no ready made garments or home textile products manufactured with Turkish fabric ‘.  The report drew attention to the fact that in order to stop the uncontrolled course of the sector ‘a restructuring from A to Z’ was necessary. 

The report of the ‘Textile Specialization Committee which will be one of the documents to constitute the basis of the 9th development plan to be applied between the years 2007-2013 is completed. Some of the interesting sections of the report where many striking remarks were made are as follows:
*While in the ready-to-wear and fashion trade the main cost item is raw material, in textile in addition to raw materials, human resources also is among the important cost sources. In the long term the cost structure of the sector has to reach the international averages or the average of Turkey’s competitor countries. Otherwise the sector cannot preserve its competitive power. 

* The Turkish textile and ready made garments sector is a KOBI weighted sector and as the unregistered transactions are above 50 percent especially in the ready made garments industry even the estimations regarding the number of enterprises shows big differences. According to the data 80 percent of those working in the ready-made garments industry is working unrecorded.  The unrecorded employment ratio in the textile and ready-made garments sector is at the levels of 62 percent.  

*When textile and ready-made garments are evaluated as a whole, it can be observed that the imports of these sectors reach 7.7 billion dollars level in the year 2004.  The increase in the imports of these two sectors from 3.2 billion dollars in 1999 to 7.7 billion dollars in 2004 indicates that there is quite a big increase. While the increase in imports had more than doubled the exports in the equivalent period increased from 9.8 billion dollars to 17.6 billion dollars. 

*The Turkish ready-made garments and fashion trade industry has become an industry that works with an increasing ratio of imported input. In the year 2005 42 percent of the textile materials used in the total production of the ready made garments and fashion trade industry and 67 percent of the textile materials used in the exported products were to be met by imports.

*According to the calculations made by the Textile Specialization Commission, in the event that the trend in the textile and fashion trade industry of the 4 years following the 2001 crisis    continues exactly as before, the Turkish textile industry will be theoretically completely dead by 2013.

*The most important and up-to-date issue in the Turkish textile and ready-made garments industry is not being able to set the convenient price.  The number of textile and ready made garment companies that have moved totally or partly their production abroad (led by Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Romania, Bulgaria, Egypt, Jordan and China) as they would have no competitive power left because of high costs if they continued manufacturing in Turkey, has reached 100.

*As a dynamic development strategy could not be determined the sector displayed   an unplanned, unprogrammed and consequently an unhealthy growth during the 8^th Development Plan Period. If the up-to-date issues of the sector are not solved urgently, the sector is in danger of sliding into a collapse carrying along all the economy with it.

A Restructuring is Inevitable
*It has become an inevitable obligation to realize a restructuring in the sector from yarn production to final product production, from designing to quality, from purchasing to marketing, from worker training to manager training, from R&D to organization, from product types to production places, from intercompany relations to relations between the sector and the public, in brief in every matter that comes to mind from A to Z.

*The 9th Plan Period is a period which is of crucial importance fort he textile sector and the ready made garments industry. The sector will either continue as it has so far without plans, programs, at large and will shrink uncontrollably day by day losing its competitive power or thanks to a restructuring that will be realized in a conscious manner, it will continue to pursue its leadership position.   

* If it goes on there will be no ready-made garments or home textile products manufactured with Turkish fabric in the year 2013. All the ready-made garments and home textile products to be sold in Turkey will be products imported as either completely tailor-made or as fabric. As a consequence in the year 2013 Turkey will become net importer country in the foreign trade of textile-ready made garments production and the foreign trade will display a deficit of 3,8 billion dollars. As a result, if the trend of today continues in imports and exports within ten years Turkey will become a country where the textile-ready made garments production and exports will be greatly regressed, where textile importation has decreased to the minimal level, where the imports of ready made garments and fashion trade has reached peak levels, where certain Turkish ready made garment industrialists survive by manufacturing abroad for the domestic market and exportation to 3rd countries. 

Turkey is Already Out of the Far East Track
Süleyman Orakçıoğlu/President of the Ready Made Garments Exporters Association of Istanbul
Turkey is undergoing a change process. We are advancing with sure steps on the path to become a fashion center. Nothing can be obtained out of coincidence. We shall of course suffer in this transformation process. However we cannot obtain anything by complaining about ourselves. We have the power to overcome the process that Spain and Italy had undergone. Today cooperation has been established between knowledge and design spirit.  There are tens of projects that we have implemented and we shall obtain their benefit 3-4 years later. We are already out of the   Far East track, which has cheap workforce. Such reports are prepared at desks. We give importance to what has been experienced and the works of those who live.