Turkish textile industry players not finding enough Turks to work for them are now focusing to bring over Bangladeshi workers to Turkey, said Istanbul Textile and Apparel Exporter Associations (IHKIB) head Hikmet Tanrıverdi.

According to Tanrıverdi, they cannot find Turkish blue-collar workers to hire in their factories at the minimum wage, as a majority of them prefer to work in the services sector for the same amount of money in a cleaner working environment.

For now the Syrian workers have saved the Turkish textile sector. As the textile sector players have been hiring Syrian workers for a couple of years, especially in the Marmara region. There are now many Syrian workers who are playing a great role in fostering the textile sector.

Many textile sector players have been planning to bring cheap labor from Bangladesh and sooner or later they will start calling them to Turkey to work in the textile sector.

Today, Turkey's textile and apparel industry not only is a generator of economic activity, but also ranks among the leading exporters globally. Turkey currently is the European Union's (EU's) second-largest supplier, behind China, of textiles and apparel.