Tekyay

Tekyay is the company Osman Bey placed under Kenan’s management, and it becomes a direct competitor to Satsat. Its rise reshapes the balance between the two family businesses: access to a textile magnate’s products and the recruitment of Satsat’s staff give Tekyay advantages that Kemal Basmacı struggles to counter.

Formation and Expansion

Osman Bey appointed Kenan to manage Tekyay. The company’s success, as Kemal understands it, did not chiefly reflect the way his brother and Kenan ran it. A more consequential advantage came when Turgay Bey, a textile magnate, assigned Tekyay the distribution rights for several important products. Those rights helped the new competitor gain ground against Satsat.

The arrangement also reflected a repaired social connection. Turgay Bey had put aside his resentment over the slight at the engagement party, and his family was again on good terms with Osman Bey’s. The families shared travel magazines and went skiing together at Uludağ in winter, then shopping in Paris and London in spring. Their renewed familiarity accompanied a business alliance with direct consequences for Satsat.

Competition with Satsat

Tekyay pursued an aggressive hiring strategy. Kenan targeted both promising young managers Kemal had brought into Satsat and two middle-aged employees whose hard work and honesty had long supported the firm. They left for the much larger salaries Tekyay offered. The losses weakened Satsat’s existing team while strengthening its rival with experienced staff and recruits Kemal had personally selected.

Kemal felt taken aback by the tactics but had little ability to respond. The contest was not simply between two companies: Tekyay competed against the firm founded by Kemal’s father, and its expansion was being directed by Kemal’s own brother.

Family Conflict and Perceptions of Authority

Kemal repeatedly complained over supper to his mother that Osman Bey was so greedy and eager to seize an advantage that he was competing against their father’s company. His mother declined to take sides, saying, “I really don’t want to come between you two, my son.” Her answer left the dispute unresolved rather than settling which brother had the stronger claim to lead the family business.

Kemal suspected that Osman Bey had encouraged their mother to see him as no longer competent to run Satsat. In that account, Kemal’s separation from Sibel, his unusual private habits, and his visits to the Keskin family had become evidence against his fitness. The rivalry therefore touched not only Satsat’s market position but also Kemal’s standing within his family.

Significance

Tekyay’s gains expose how access to distribution and the ability to pay higher salaries can shift power between competing firms. Its success is linked to Turgay Bey’s commercial support and Kenan’s recruitment of Satsat’s employees, while its management is bound up with a family dispute over business authority. For Kemal, the challenge is both practical and personal: the rival taking employees and market ground from Satsat is led by his brother.