Edward Dutton meets Sever Gundogdu who a set up the Mediterranean food ship Efesos in Oulu.

Ephesus was an ancient city in Anatolia, an area of Turkey that was once populated by Greeks and founded in the tenth century BC. According to Greek Myth, it was established by ‘the Queen of Amazons’ and, later, its people worshipped Alexander the Great as a God when he visited the city.
Turkish entrepreneur Sever Gundogda admits that Oulu is rather different from Ephesus but, nevertheless, he has a set up a shop in Oulu, named after the ancient city, to bring Greek and Turkish food to northern Finland.

‘Mediterranean Food’

‘Finns like Turkish food!’ chuckled the twenty-six year-old, who used to work as a clothes stall-holder in a Turkish Bazaar.
‘Eighty percent of my customers are Finns! They’ve been on holiday to Turkey and they come here trying to find the things they’ve enjoyed in Turkey such as stuffed grape-leaves and apple tea!’
His other customers are expatriates – mainly Turks, Iraqis and Kosovans – looking for food that reminds them of home.
‘There are quite a few Turks in Oulu!’ smiled Sever, ‘and I think I know most of them! I order in my stock mainly from Turkey.’
Sever met his Finnish wife while she was on holiday one summer in the Turkish Mediterranean resort of Marmaris, which is not quite as ancient as Ephesus, having existed since only the sixth century BC.
‘We met when she was on holiday and I was working as a barman’ Sever, who speaks English very well, recalled.
‘So . . . I’d been to Finland a few times before I moved here. My wife is from Oulu.’
Sever came to Oulu a year and a half ago, married his Finnish wife and began attending school to improve his Finnish.
‘Maybe it’s one of the hardest languages to learn in the world!’ Sever laughed. ‘Perhaps Turkish is hard as well . . . but there isn’t this partitive that you have to learn!’
But despite the ‘difficult language’ Sever is enjoying running his Mediterranean food shop in Oulu.

‘Helping new businesses’

‘The culture is so different,’ he remarked. ‘Even though Finns are quite reserved at first, you can really trust Finns . . . they do what they say they’ll do.’
Sever has also been amazed by how punctual Finns are. ‘If they say that they’ll meet you at two o’clock then they’ll be there at two o’clock . . . it’s not like that in Turkey!’ he laughed.
Sever also felt that he’d been given a great deal of assistance of Oulu in establishing his new shop.
‘The government here helps new businesses. They help to make a business plan for you and they also give you some “start-up money”.’
Sever left briefly to serve some Finnish customers who had come into the shop. Efesos has been open for three months now and Sever estimates that he serves between fifty and eighty customers per day, with Saturday being his busiest day.
Certain cultural differences also made business easier for him. ‘In Finland when you set the price then that’s the price. In Turkey you have to haggle and often end up selling it at too low a price! That doesn’t happen here!’
Meeting Finns at his bazaar stall in Turkey has also helped him to understand how to run a shop in Oulu.
‘I think I maybe understand Finns. They don’t want to come into the shop and talk. They don’t want to be pestered to buy things. They just want to come in and look around quietly . . . and if they want help then they’ll ask. I understand that . . . because I have many Finnish friends . . . and a Finnish wife!’
Sever has also been trying to promote his new shop in the Oulu region. It was plugged with an article in the Kaleva, the Oulu region’s local newspaper, he had an opening event with free Turkish food and drink and it is even being advertised on the sides of some Oulu buses.
His business aside though, Sever has also enjoyed simply living in Oulu and has found few difficulties as a non-European.

A Safe City

‘An important thing,’ he said as he showed me some of his Turkish produce,‘is the safety. It’s not like Istanbul! It’s very safe here. I feel that I can just walk about and I’m safe.’
But of course there are certain things that Sever misses about Turkey. ‘I miss my family . . . my mother and my father . . . they weren’t able to be at the wedding unfortunately . . . Oh! And I miss the Turkish bazaars!’ he gleamed.
Sever explained that Turkey is renowned for its bustling, lively bazaars such as ‘The Grand Bazaar’ (Kapalicarsi) in Istanbul.’ It’s one of the largest covered markets in the world and boasts fifty-eight streets, 4000 shops and up to 400,000 customers a day.
‘They are really fun places!’ smiled Sever. ‘There are so many different kinds of things there, you can bargain and they’re so full of life!’
Sever used to work in such a Turkish Bazaar but now that he runs an Oulu shop he has expansion plans on his mind.
‘I’m selling my products to restaurants but I want to sell to more restaurants’ he said. ‘And I want to open up other shops – maybe open up a wholesalers and start to sell in bulk to Turkish restaurants.’
But of all the differences between Turkey and Oulu it’s seeing reindeer on the roads some distance outside Oulu that he’s found the most peculiar.
‘They just walk into the road!’ he said, ‘And they come right up to you! There’d be nothing like it at home!’