Crisis a life-changer for top exec

When Kaan Sarıaydın lost his job as chief executive officer and board member of Morgan Stanley Securities Turkey amid the global financial crisis, he remained calm because he embraced the opportunity for change.

Sarıaydın had spent the majority of his career working as an investment banker and trader with Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley in Germany and London.

“While most people go from A to B and then to C in their career, I was to-ing and fro-ing between the two firms,” Sarıaydın said in an interview with the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review.

He then, in his words, got “burnt out.”

“My success story came to a standstill. My way of thinking changed and I was constantly questioning what I was doing,” he said. “You start to question what you are doing and realize that it’s an artificial world where every day is spent in front of screens. Do we do anything to help humanity? No.”

Questioning was something Sarıaydın learned at a young age growing up in Germany. Later, spending a large portion of his career working in London gave him the best of three very different cultures. “I come from a mixture of cultures and thinking systems,” he said. “David Judson, the editor in chief of the Daily News, calls me the Anglo-Prusso-Turk. I could not agree more.”

Sarıaydın said the change in his way of thinking at Lehman Brothers caused him to almost become schizophrenic. “One day you wake up and realize that you don’t like doing this anymore,” he said. “It’s an antagonizing struggle that causes a split personality because it’s something you always wanted to do and it earns you a living, but your soul is directing you somewhere else.”

His main motive in moving to Morgan Stanley Turkey was to give himself an opportunity to break the cycle. Not only was he shifting from being a trader to a manager, he was also uprooting himself and his family to move to Turkey.

A life-changing phone call

The real change, however, came after Morgan Stanley. While at the firm, he was occupied with building up trading and sales and was again unable to find time to pursue any of his personal goals. Thus, when the decision came from the top to close down the firm, he was calm and almost relieved.

“Corporations are dictatorships or constitutional monarchies. They tell you their decision and you literally become unemployed,” Sarıaydın said.

After the Morgan Stanley stint ended, he received a phone call from a Turkish business association inviting him to the southern province of Osmaniye to speak at a conference on Turkey and the crisis. After that, Sarıaydın received countless similar offers.

His focus at these conferences has been on “paradigm shifts.” According to Sarıaydın, we need a new paradigm; our consciousness and perceptions need to change.

“I am an idealist and I want to make changes. I cannot do it myself, but I can probably make change happen,” he said. “Some call this stupid and naive, but I don’t believe it is. We have a limited time on this earth and I don’t want to grow old without at least trying.”

Regarding the global crisis, Sarıaydın thinks there can be no return to previous financial attitudes. “Central banks want us to go back to the system we used two years ago, where we take credit and get into debt, but this is not possible; we must change,” he told the Daily News. “Otherwise there will be a bigger slump.”

Sarıaydın also works as a consultant to Comorian President Ahmed Abdallah Mohamed Sambi. “Being a delegate for the Comorian union is idealistic, but I love it. The poorest countries in the world need everything,” he said. “The Comorians do not starve because they have an abundance of food through fishing, but they are underdeveloped and are in need of a lot.”

The former executive also has various business partnerships, including working as a partner in the information and communication technology firm Eurofund. He said he had also recently entered into a partnership with an American company working to launch new technology, but declined to provide any details at this time.

The problem of education

“The biggest problem in Turkey is education. I will not hold back from saying that it is a catastrophe,” he said. “Where [else] in the world do you go to school from morning to evening and then have to go to repetition courses on the weekend just to be able to pass national curriculum exams?”

According to Sarıaydın, the country is “raising and breeding racing horses” from one generation to the next: “Turkey has brilliant students, but when so many of them say that they do not have a future in their own country, it suggests something is terribly wrong with the education system.”

He believes energy policies also need to change. “The sun, the wind and geothermal energy resources are all free and available, but are not used,” Sarıaydın said. “It is not in the interest of Turkey to import [this much] energy. It is in the interest of some lobbies that make money from it.”

For the country to develop, he said, investments must also be made in research, technology, transportation and logistics.

Sarıaydın is interested in asking people to question what they are doing, and what is being done around them.

“We do not live in a democracy,” he said. “We put an x to choose a party, but when they make decisions for four to five years, we are not once asked to help them decide what those decisions might be. If they say go to war, we go.”

Sarıaydın said he was content in his corporate life, where he fulfilled some of the lifelong aims for which he worked so hard. But in doing what he does today, he said, he is much more fulfilled than he was before.

“I am not earning anymore, but I am building something and I know I will get results,” he said. “Taking risks was my job. Now I’m risking my life.”