'Turkish salmon', Norwegian entrepreneurs, and the global salmon value chain

From the start, there was considerable media coverage of the large corporate investment in salmon, the plans and visions of Norwegian experts, and public support. In an article entitled Salmon producers, come to us in one of the major Turkish dailies, the municipal major in Ardeşen stated that ‘there is place for all here. We, as a municipality, will provide all kinds of support to all local as well as international entrepreneurs that want to invest in Ardeşen.’¹⁴ The same article also claimed that ‘according to Norwegian experts, within five years Turkey will with good planning be able to produce 30 thousand tons of salmon annually.’ Other newspaper articles ran headlines such as: ‘The salmon project took hold’; ‘Salmon provided hope’; ‘In place of anchovy, salmon fields’; ‘Freshwater trout grows bigger in seawater’ — and typically featured promises of sales and production volumes.¹⁵

The leadership at the Fisheries Research Institute in Trabzon contributed to the impression of Atlantic salmon and salmon trout farming in the Black Sea as an enticing business opportunity: ‘The aim of salmon farming is 1000 tonnes/year in 1991, in the 2000s production will reach 150,000 tonnes/year. This aim will be reached by 1000 families producing 150 tonnes of sea trout annually…and one family firm’s annual income will be 1,200,000 dollars…which is 60 times what a family gets from producing hazelnuts or tea in the Black Sea region’ ([15], quoted in [4]: 119). The director of the Fisheries Research Institute travelled along the coast presenting his visions for fish farming to ‘water produce’ cooperatives. In one such meeting which I attended in the summer of 1990, he showed videos displaying possible cage designs and explained the potential for fish farming in the Black Sea as well as what state support could be expected by prospective entrepreneurs. He mentioned the Norwegian Atlantic salmon farm in Kefken and said that he had invited experts from Norway, Finland, Sweden, Japan, France, and the US to come to a meeting at his institute to discuss fish farming.

Thus, when more than a hundred small entrepreneurs ventured into this business in the early 1990s, it was in an atmosphere of inflated expectations for the potential of fish farming in the Black Sea. By 1993, while 138 had applied to start salmon farming in the Black Sea region, 24 actually started operation.¹⁶ In the province of Trabzon, 50 applied to start farming of Atlantic salmon and/or salmon trout in the sea, of which 16 started, mostly with salmon trout. Typical licensed capacity was 200–400 tons, using circular cages with a 10 m diameter. These businesses to a large extent used locally produced equipment (e.g. cages from Armaplast in Izmit) and feed (Pinar).

In addition to the media coverage and the example set by the large corporations, state policies were a driving force and responsible for many local firms plunging into fish farming in the Black Sea. In Turkey, state policies towards fisheries have, since the early 1970s when responsibility for fisheries was transferred to the Ministry of Agricultural Affairs (MARA), been very ‘agriculturalist’ ([26]: 60), focusing on ‘water produce’ in place of ‘fisheries’ and aiming to increase ‘production’ in place of managing ‘fish catch’. Within this framing along with a ‘water produce’ state bureaucracy and research largely manned by agricultural engineers, aquaculture received an inordinate amount of attention. Thus, ‘water produce’ units within the MARA were more than ready to support fish farming when salmon ‘appeared on the scene’.

Direct state support for aquaculture development is difficult to chart, both as regards practices during the 1990s and the current situation. The lack of clarity stems in part from the various kinds of more generalized support provided by the state which can also benefit aquaculture. State support was certainly significant, but the scope of this article only permits a short overview and a few examples.¹⁷ Overall, government incentives included subsidized credits, tax and VAT rebates, and capital grants covering parts of investment costs.

In the early 1990s the state provided grants covering 25 % of investment costs in aquaculture through the MARA provincial offices. According to officials I spoke to in 1994, the provincial office in Trabzon paid 240,000 USD in such grants to 20 small fish-farm entrepreneurs in the Province of Trabzon, such as the grant to Can Kardeşler mentioned above. In addition, fish farmers could take loans with subsidized interest rates from the state-owned Agricultural Bank (43 % in 1994, well below current inflation). It is often claimed (see e.g. [10]: 117) that many in Trabzon and elsewhere in the Black Sea region took the investment grants and subsidized credit without ever embarking on fish farming. Officials in Trabzon admitted that it was difficult to get people to return the grant if they had not fulfilled the grant conditions.

For international capital, state policies were important beyond direct financial support. For example, during the 1980s and 1990s Chile’s emergence as an attractive investment location for salmon firms was greatly facilitated by its open economy and friendly investment climate (see e.g. [32], [12]). Turkey had seen a similar political economy evolving, with a military coup in 1982 followed by economic liberalization. This meant that setting up business in Turkey was fairly simple and attractive for foreign capital. A Norwegian sales prospectus to attract investors for a (non-realized) Atlantic salmon RAS facility in Turkey lists advantages of investing in Turkey, including there being ‘a taxation agreement between Turkey and Norway’ and ‘government incentives, such as low taxation of income, and free export of profits’ [5]. Fish farming and hatchery development were also eligible for incentives from the Directorate of Foreign Investment to attract international capital ([19]:175).

International institutions have also promoted the development of aquaculture in the Black Sea region of Turkey, especially during the early 1990s. What was the effect of these initiatives? In 1990 Turkey was in many respects considered a developing economy in need of support. At the same time, aquaculture had emerged globally as a promising new economy worthy of development assistance. For instance, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) held a central role in the development of salmon farming in Chile from the late 1960s to the late 1980s. This included facilitation of access to the Japanese market [23]. The Canadian International Development Agency also played some role in the development of salmon farming firms in Chile [12]. While international institutions may have been inspired by the emerging SBSB farming in the Turkish Aegean and the promise of salmon farming in the Black Sea, the ecological/fishery collapse in the Black Sea together with the new geopolitical situation with the disintegration of the USSR made their involvement more relevant and desirable. While the UN-FAO had hitherto been the major external supporter of fisheries research and development, including a 1979 mission on the development of aquaculture in the Black Sea [34], the World Bank became a more important player after 1990. In 1993 MARA commissioned several extensive reports on aquaculture development in Turkey. The work was funded by the World Bank and a Japanese grant and undertaken by the UK consultancy firm MacAlister Elliott and Partners Ltd. [14], [30], who advised that the authorities should encourage marine aquaculture other than Atlantic salmon and salmon trout. In a development probably independent of the WB-funded studies, the WB agreed in the early 1990s to provide a 30–40 million NOK loan on favourable conditions (3 years, instalment-free, with interest well below inflation) to an ambitious BioAkva offshoot that planned to farm Atlantic salmon in large floating tanks with cold flow-through water from below the thermocline. The plan stranded only on the major Norwegian owner’s hesitance to allow the Turkish partners to have influence in the joint venture.

In a parallel development, the Global Environmental Facility (funded by UN organizations and the World Bank) established the Black Sea Environmental Programme (BSEP) in 1993 with the aim ‘to provide a sustainable basis for managing the Black Sea’ [19]. BSEP facilitated a range of studies and initiatives, including a comprehensive survey and scoping study of aquaculture in all Black Sea countries in 1994 (ibid.). The ToR for the aquaculture study mission notes the ‘rapid decline in the Black Sea capture fisheries’ and identifies aquaculture as a possible alternative to generate income in the region. In the Turkish leg of the survey ([19]: 169–180), again conducted partly by MacAlister Elliott and Partners Ltd. in close cooperation with personnel from the MARA, the mission focused primarily on the status of and reasons for failure in marine farming of Atlantic salmon and salmon trout, detailing technical, biological and market challenges, without providing any clear recommendations.

A third development in this period was JICA’s support for and cooperation with the state Marine Research Institute in Trabzon concerning breeding and farming of turbot, a species heavily decimated by fishing and other pressures. Turkish authorities took the initiative in 1994 and the project ran from 1997–2007. The ambition was to achieve something similar with turbot in Turkey as JICA had achieved with salmon in Chile; although technically largely successful, commercialization proved difficult.

Finally, from 2003 onwards, fisheries were included as a separate item in the twinning processes to align Turkish legal structures with those of EU. Aquaculture was incorporated in the comprehensive review of the ‘water produce sector’, which noted that a ‘weak variable’ ‘on the topic of dissemination of aquaculture was the lack of strategic control’ ([17]: 11). However, actual measures taken during the twinning process largely addressed fisheries (port offices, vessel tracking system, etc.). Anticipated legal changes to secure alignment with the acquis (the body of common rights and obligations that is binding on all the EU member states) would have had implications for aquaculture, but legal and regulatory changes were minimal before negotiations of the Fisheries Chapter were frozen (by the EU) as early as December 2006. More recently the EU funded, through its European Neighbourhood Instrument, a comprehensive study of aquaculture in the Black Sea region (excluding Bulgaria and Russia but including Greece) [13]. Although the intention of this project has been to promote the sharing of ‘good practice’ in aquaculture, it seems to have had little impact on developments in Turkey.

Despite the interest and effort international institutions showed, they did not really have much impact on the actual development of fish farming in the Turkish Black Sea region, in part because political and economic developments hampered implementation or made them irrelevant. MacAlister and Elliot was initially brought in to help assess suitable locations for fish farming in the coastal Black Sea, but management in MARA found their recommendations unrealistic since the report considered almost all coves, bays and lagoons suitable for fish farming. Elements of later reports by MacAlister and Elliot were incorporated to some degree in the national five-year development plans, but sparsely implemented due to the economic crisis in Turkey during 1997–2001. Thus, except for JICA, international initiatives were not followed up by funds or activities. Even before the occupation of Crimea in 2014, relations with Russia had become very strained; there was no longer hope for the Black Sea becoming an integrated political-economic area [27]. Without political and economic support, the BSEP withered. At the same time, Turkey drifted further away from the EU while it developed a stronger export-oriented (but debt-financed) economy. When the ‘Turkish salmon’ sector finally took off around 2018, international institutions played no significant role.