Hasan Mete - Businessman and entrepreneur Hasan Mete aims to turn villages into attraction centres for reverse migration for the young generation

In which sectors are you active?

I can say that we are in different sectors in many parts of Türkiye. We operate in classic automobile restoration in Adana, aluminium import/export with our partners in Dilovası, villa constructions in Yalova as well as construction, iron and steel sectors.

Could you talk about yourself a little bit?

I am 46 years old and was born in Erzurum. I am a father to two sons named Osman Alp and Yusuf Islam. I came to Istanbul with my family back in 1989 and engaged in different professions to make money. I worked in construction, furniture stores, transportation and even transported coal. After saving some money, I opened a furniture store and ran the store until the end of 1999. After that I moved on from the furniture business and started working in steel as I had previous experience as a scrap steel dealer. My first office was a small place and I sold my products to different parts of Anatolia. I managed to grow my business and started to import products. As my business grew, I decided to start working as a construction subcontractor since it was also my family’s business. After completing construction of social areas of an important project in Basaksehir and a total of 28 school buildings in different sizes in Istanbul, I realised that I am also good at planning. However, due to various reasons, I had to file for bankruptcy in 2012. It was a difficult time for me: I survived a very dangerous car accident and suffered from paralysis. I had to work bedridden for days but I never gave up.

Then I started to operate in the iron and steel sect industry or by taking great risks and I brought the company to a good point in a short time. We have risen to the level of Türkiye’s third biggest company in steel construction production. We established factories in Adana and Istanbul. We subcontracted works for state tenders. We completed Diyarbakir, Dalaman, Yuksekova airports and many other projects.

After that we decided to get smaller as a company instead of growing in a time when it was very difficult to gather the right people around us while what I experienced in the past weighed on me. When I realised that I wanted to lead a comfortable and peaceful life, I developed a village project for myself which turned out to be a turning point in my career.

Could you talk about your Smart Attraction Villages project?

Villages in Türkiye began to lose their value with the migra- tions that started to the west around 1960. A generation away from agriculture and animal husbandry began to grow in Türkiye. I started researching how to send this generation back to the villages. The future of a country is through production. We sat down with nine professors who are experts in their fields and made a travel plan to the places where we can review 39 different business lines such as agriculture, technology and animal husbandry. With our motto “Those who rule over food, rule all”, we travelled to 12 different countries including China, Malaysia, India, France, Netherlands, the US, Germany and Russia to see their agriculture methods and how we can merge technology and agriculture in our own country.

There are a total of 18,964 villages in Türkiye and 98 percent of those who live in villages are above the age of 65. We thought that if we could bring sports centres, theatre, opera and cinema halls and many activities to the villages and combine these activities with art and education, they might encourage the young generation to go back to live in villages. And our survey with 20,000 people claimed that a huge part of people would return to villages without further encouragement.

We aimed to both turn them into forest villages and prevent soil erosion by bringing pine and derivative trees from the US and Russia that are suitable for Türkiye’s climate and that can produce quick yields. We said let’s build four factories in each village and bring blue and white collar people to these factories. We planned to provide vocation al training from the first to the fourth grade in each village, just like the system in the Netherlands and France. We also planned to turn the village houses into smart homes with solar and wind energy panels along with recycling the waste coming from the people as well as the animals. We thought if we can build 10,000 villages like this, we might achieve the goal of bringing the population of the villages in Türkiye back to the population in 1970, before the great migration. A project is considered a successful project if it recovers its investment in 10 years. As a result of our feasibility studies, we calculated that the investment to be made in the villages would return within three years. We wanted to implement a project that would allow the people living in these self sustaining villages to live happily and almost completely eliminate dependency to others. We aim to transfer what we have received from our ancestors to our grandchildren and to eliminate moral erosion. Another aim of ours is to bring back the real historical texture of Istanbul, which we have owned for 570 years.

Is the Smart Attraction Village a viable project for other parts of the world?

This project is applicable all over the world. There are examples similar to our project in China, India and Malaysia. However, they are not as comprehensive as our project. Israel, Mexico, Azerbaijan, Georgia showed great interest in our project and asked to implement our system in their countries and they have allocated enormous spaces to bring the project to life. What lawmakers and state administrators are thinking about this project, which includes not only reverse migration from metropolises to villages, but also recycling, ag- riculture, animal husbandry, energy and many things that are important for the world? This project, which will bring peace and brotherhood to the whole world, is unfortunately not possible to realise in a world ruled by capitalism, and I believe that we can only realise this project in certain places. State administrators in Türkiye are very positive for our project but they did not want to see the project from my point of view but we have the knowledge and planning to make it possible at any time.

There is a serious investment in digitalization around the world. The agriculture and food crisis have begun to threaten the whole world. What roadmap should be followed to avoid this crisis?

There is something very important that humanity has lost: morality and mercy. In order to bring this to life again, I think that the lawmakers of all countries should come together and introduce compassion and morality to humanity. Death comes for all of us no matter what you do financially. In a world where there is death, there is no need to live as if you will never die. If we can regain our sense of compassion and morality individually, we will begin to regain it as humanity.