Today Fair Wear Foundation in cooperation with the Agreement on Sustainable Garments and Textile hosted a learning seminar ‘Sourcing responsibly in Turkey. How to due diligence?’ for garment brands sourcing from Turkey. More than 70 participants from brands learned about specific risks in the garment industry in Turkey. During this seminar, brands learned from experts and experienced brands about how to do their due diligence in this country.
Doing business in Turkey
The purpose of this seminar was to help companies gain more insights into risks in Turkey and to include these insights into their own purchasing practices and sourcing dialogue. Issues addressed were, for example, risks concerning freedom of association, Syrian refugees, wages and subcontracting.
Turkey is an important sourcing country for Dutch garments and textile companies. 61% of all signatories to the Dutch agreement source from Turkey in 561 production locations. After China, Turkey has the second largest number of production sites in a specific country on the production location list of all agreement signatories together.
Learn from experts
FWF’s country representatives for Turkey contributed to the programme as well as experts from Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI), Fair Labor Association (FLA) and brands. Round table sessions and workshops on due diligence risks helped companies to implement the knowledge into practice. Best practices on living wages were shared by FWF brand Mini Rodini and their supplier as well as a ‘brand panel’ consisting of Esprit, Adidas and C&A.
An important piece of this programme focused on the brands’ own responsibility through sustainable purchasing practices and sourcing dialogue. The agreement of the signatory brands is mandatory from them to do their due diligence, and are expected to turn their new insights of Turkey into concrete goals and actions for improvement in their action plan.
More companies
More than 27 representatives participated in the seminar. Among them were FWF brands, signatories of the AGT, the German Partnership for Sustainable Textiles as well as ETI and FLA member brands. This seminar and its goals has shown a growing awareness and intent to do due diligence in Turkey.