Scope for foreign Construction, Building service Engineers in Turkey

Abdu Manaf New member

Member since 02 November 2022

Abdu ManafNew member07 November 2022 11:18:06

Hi,

聽聽Myself is a Building service Engineer,聽 with substantial聽 experience of GCC聽 market. How is scope for foreign聽 engineers in Turkey, considering current boom in real estate market.聽 Do Language really a barrier?. Or there is a聽 government restriction for recruiting external work force.

Randomguy2000 Serial expat

Member since 02 November 2020

Randomguy2000Serial expat08 November 2022 01:39:39

276

Hi,
聽 Myself is a Building service Engineer, with substantial experience of GCC market. How is scope for foreign engineers in Turkey, considering current boom in real estate market. Do Language really a barrier?. Or there is a government restriction for recruiting external work force.
-@Abdu Manaf

Do you want to find an engineering job or are you asking about starting a construction company in Turkey?

Yes. Language will be a huge barrier in Turkey. Less than 1% of the people speak English. If you can't speak Turkish, then it will be hard for you to work in this field.

Yes, there is restrictions on recruiting foreign workers. You have to have so many Turk's working for you before you can recruit a foreign worker. You cannot start a construction company and import a bunch of workers or for a Turkish company to import a bunch of foreign workers. The majority of their workers have to be Turks. Which means that if you do work in this field or start a business in this field you will either need to know Turkish or hire a translator who can speak both English, and Turkish.

Some high-level engineering jobs, programming jobs, doctors, dentists, etc. you will be able to speak only English for the job, and also being a language teacher. But besides high-level jobs then all of the jobs will require you to speak Turkish since no one speaks English.

Also, if you did start a construction company here you would have a very hard time finding contracts, and customers to hire you over an already established Turkish company that has been operating in the area for years.

Even when I was in one city in Turkey almost all construction contracts were given to one company, and they ran a monopoly on almost everything construction related. That does not mean every city or province is the same in Turkey. But they have the advantage over you because they know how to speak Turkish. What permits they need, who they need to speak to in order to get permission for building or making changes to it. They know who to speak to in order to get contracts, or who to speak to in order to help them find new customers.