ISTANBUL
\nCut-price branded perfumes and fake high-end handbags line the ornate alleys of Istanbul\u2019s Grand Bazaar, with traditional merchants saying the luxury counterfeits are stripping the marketplace of its character. Where heritage Turkish crafts once flourished under the Ottoman-era marketplace\u2019s painted ceilings, the elegant carpet store run by Hasim Gureli is now surrounded by shops selling designer dupes.
\n\u201cBack in the day, imitations were rare,\u201d said Gureli, who is vice-president of the bazaar\u2019s traders\u2019 association and a member of its board of directors.\u201dWhen some people started selling fake bags, they kept themselves hidden. They were afraid of the state,\u201d the carpet-seller added. Many others among the bazaar\u2019s old-timers, who have fond memories of the small workshops that used to fill its labyrinthine alleyways, despair at seeing it overrun by fraudulent facsimiles.
\nTwo aisles down, tea set-seller Gazi Uludag lamented that the Grand Bazaar has \u201clost its unique character\u201d.\u201dThere is nothing but imported or counterfeit goods left and it\u2019s getting worse every year,\u201d he said. In her handmade carpet store, Florence Heilbronn-Ogutgen bemoaned the fact that an artisan friend \u201cwho used to make real, beautiful bags in very good leather\u201d had to shutter his shop, unable to make a living.
\nFor the shopkeeper, who has been at the bazaar since 1998, artisans \u201ccan no longer survive\u201d in the face of competition from the dubious dupes.\u201dThese days, the finest boutiques are the counterfeit ones!\u201d she said.
\n\u201cThey\u2019re the only ones left who can afford the $10,000 to $15,000 a month rent on the main alley. The bazaar has lost its soul.\u201d
\nOne of the world\u2019s largest covered markets, the almost six-centuries-old Grand Bazaar attracts millions of tourists every year — many of them lured by the promise of cheap luxury.
\n\u201cAll of Europe comes here! I\u2019ve even had footballer\u2019s wives,\u201d beamed 36-year-old Kemal, reluctant to give his surname for fear of checks on his merchandise. Kemal made his living selling \u201cmade in Turkey\u201d counterfeits for 15 years, before luxury fakes began taking over each of the bazaar\u2019s hallowed shop windows one by one.
\nHis imitation Celine calfskin and Saint Laurent quilted leather handbags \u201care of the same quality as the originals, but five to 10 times cheaper\u201d, the vendor promised. Whatever the bag, a knock-off can be found at the Grand Bazaar. \u201cIf you can find it on the Champs-Elysees, then you can find it here,\u201d he said.
\nAs one of the main countries for the production and transit of counterfeit goods, along with China and Hong Kong, knock-offs are ubiquitous in Turkey.
\nThe trade supports a whole economy of its own, from the small retailers to the manufacturers who also export their counterfeits to the European Union. \u201cThey make very high profits. You can see handbags being sold for thousands of dollars in the Grand Bazaar,\u201d said Dilara Bural, a criminologist at the UK\u2019s University of Bath.
\nOrganised crime may be at work, \u201cbut we can\u2019t generalise and say that every single counterfeiting scheme in Turkey is linked to organised crime.
\nThat\u2019s not true,\u201d she underlined. For Bural, the trade is enabled by a \u201cwidespread cultural acceptance of counterfeiting\u201d in Turkey which \u201cin some cases extends to key enforcers, including the police and the judiciary\u201d.
\nTurkish law firms hired by the luxur
\ny behemoths are trying to clamp down on the counterfeiters, but that task is easier said than done. \u201cThe problem is that you need to get search warrants for every address. There are thousands of shops in the Grand Bazaar so you need to get thousands of seizure orders,\u201d lawyer Sena Yasaroglu told media.
\nHe said that even with 20 people dealing with intellectual property cases at the Moroglu Arseven law firm where he works, the challenge was formidable. A spokesman for the Grand Bazaar\u2019s board of directors insisted that \u201cthe Istanbul police carry out frequent inspections\u201d on the shops. Standing in front of his miniscule shop of 2.5 square metres (three square yards), which he rents for $1,000 a month, Murat said he worries about the inspections \u201cevery day\u201d.
\nIn 2018, he and his brother saw the police swoop in on their business.The bill was hefty: 800 fake bags seized and 40,000 euros ($43,500) in fines and legal fees.Yet the 27-year-old shopkeeper from the southeastern agricultural province of Sanliurfa resumed trading straight away.\u201dI have no choice,\u201d he said. \u201cOtherwise, what would I do? Go back to be a shepherd in my village? I don\u2019t want to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ISTANBUL Cut-price branded perfumes and fake high-end handbags line the ornate alleys of Istanbul\u2019s Grand Bazaar, with traditional merchants saying the luxury counterfeits are stripping the marketplace of its character. Where heritage Turkish crafts once flourished under the Ottoman-era marketplace\u2019s painted ceilings, the elegant carpet store run by Hasim Gureli is now surrounded by shops […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":419168,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-419146","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n