Contractor renews Istanbul with building projects
Real estate developer and contractor Haluk Sert renovates old buildings and makes the city’s slum neighborhoods livable with his As Yapi Group.
By Metin Demirsar
Istanbul (Dunya) - As a young lad, Haluk Sert worked in his father’s wholesale shop in Istanbul’s Sultan Hamam district, the center of textile trade in Turkey, competing with fellow workers in carrying huge rolls of fabrics on his back to customers.
“I tried to carry more rolls than my partners,” Mr. Sert, now 46, and founder and chairman of As Yapi Group, a contracting and real estate development group, recalled in an interview. “I worked as hard as other employees, perhaps even harder, to prove myself.”
The Sert family came from Buldan, a town in Denizli province in western Turkey, which is famous for its producers of fabrics for home textiles, but moved to Istanbul as its business flourished.
“I learned the textile trade, but I wanted to become a civil engineer and be involved in constructing buildings,” Mr. Sert, a friendly, bespectacled man with sparse hair, said.
I interviewed him on Tuesday at his head office in Kavacik, on the Asian side of the city near the entrance to second Bosphorus Bridge.
In 1983, he enrolled at Istanbul Technical University (ITU), the premier engineering school of Turkey. While studying, he was already involved in contracting, renovating old, battered buildings owned by his father’s textile merchant friends in Sultan Ahmet, Sirkeci and other parts of central Istanbul.
He received a B.Eng in civil engineering, an M.Eng in construction management and an MBA in business organizations and management policies from ITU.
His brother, Ozgun Sert, eventually took over the family textile business while he was involved as a control engineer in hundreds of building projects in Istanbul.
Establishing As Yapi
Mr. Sert established his own group As Yapi A.S., which runs the construction company As Yapi Insaat and As Yapi Real Estate Development and Construction Company. As Yapi employs 100 persons directly and 400 others indirectly and is working at 30 job sites in the city.
Mr. Sert constructed all of the buildings of Gold Bilgisayar, one of Turkey’s biggest information technology retailers, throughout the country, including sites at shopping centers.
His success with Gold Bigisayar led him the become acquainted with businessmen Aytac Biter, the Turkish distributor of Toshiba computers, and Ibrahim Ozer, chairman of Escort Computer and Turkey’s first computer manufacturer.
Messrs. Ozer and Biter, long-time friends and business associates, were acquiring buildings in the Genoese section of Istanbul, Galata, on the hills overlooking Istanbul harbor, and renovating them and building hotels and modern apartment buildings. Mr. Sert’s As Yapi joined the two businessmen’s Nar Investment, as a strategic partner.
He transformed several old buildings into hotels.
Some 4,000 buildings in Galata, many 18th and 19th century apartment buildings in a sad state of dilapidation, are to be renovated under the government’s urban renewal plan, to make the area the “new Barcelona” of Istanbul, Mr. Sert said.
Renovating Barnathan
One of the major buildings Mr. Ozer acquired is the Barnathan Apartment, a 137-year-old building located in Kuledibi, the old Jewish quarter of the city, near the 14th century Galata Tower, Mr. Sert’s As Yapi aims to turn the building, which was built by the Barnathans, a family of Istanbul Jews, into a 100-room, deluxe hotel.
He and his friends also intend to build a museum in Galata that will tell the history of the district.
Mr. Sert’s companies are also directly involved in several urban renewal projects. He and his partners acquired a block rickety apartment block in Ferikoy, an inner city slum area characterized by decaying old buildings, from 200 persons and will construct a modern building at the site.
“Our aim is to plan the city in an orderly manner. We intend to protect the Turkish texture of the city. Our projects are human friendly. While planning the city, we also have to consider the future,” Mr. Sert said.
Mr. Sert is a seasoned traveler, having visited 65 countries and hundreds of cities, where he observes urban developments.
He has also has investments in renewable energy projects, including solar energy.