First of all, congratulations on the 10-year contract renewal. How did you celebrate?
We took the chance to say a big thank you to the 46 colleagues who’ve been with us for the past 10 years. Each of them received a gift and we’re going to keep that going for anyone who hits their 10th anniversary over the next few years. We’ve worked out that there’ll be around 40–50 people reaching that milestone every year for the next five years.
You led this company from the very beginning of the Build, Operate and Transfer contract in 2014. What was important in those early years?
We spent the first four or five years building trust with our customers and partners, and we did that by being totally transparent with them. If we made a mistake, we owned up to it, and we took responsibility for fixing it. There was no hiding! Everyone in the team was encouraged to be open and honest. We learned a lot, and over time, as the motorway was progressively commissioned and operated, the trust grew until the relationships became as (if not more) important than a piece of paper.
I was fortunate to be given the autonomy to recruit as needed. It meant that we were able to build a strong gender-balanced workforce, employing double the national rate of women, and create a business that reflects Turkish society. Even today, this is ground-breaking in a country where only around one in three women of working age are in the labour force.
How did you recruit your workforce? And has that changed over the years?
The workforce has grown with each section of motorway that was built and commissioned. Back in 2016, we employed 130 people; today, it’s 800. When recruiting from outside the organisation, we have always consciously chosen people with no road operations experience, then trained them up ourselves. It’s more important that they share our values and are willing to learn than that they have operational experience. For example, our Toll Collections Manager today used to work in retail, and our Energised Equipment Maintenance Manager was previously involved in airport equipment. Today, we mostly fill positions internally and promote internally. If we have to recruit externally, the same principle applies – it doesn’t matter what they have done before – we can teach them the job if they are ready to learn.
Your employee retention rates are enviably high at 99.5% for your white-collar staff and 97.5% for blue-collar staff. How do you keep those kinds of levels?
I think part of the answer lies in the fact that they can see the very real prospect of advancement. People don’t stand still in our organisation. They are trained, and they are challenged and encouraged to move outside of their comfort zones. When we promote internally, we also fill the vacant position internally, wherever possible. Indeed, in recent years, we have been able to offer overseas placements to people as well; it’s one of the benefits of the Egis network that we can share expertise, provide training and also provide manpower on the spot. We have helped people transfer internally to jobs in Ireland, Kazakhstan and Qatar, where they are helping to build teams and local expertise in those locations. It’s exciting for them and helps them continue to grow their careers. Then, the gap at home is filled by another homegrown talent.
Our transparency with partners and customers also applies to staff. We are all accessible and reachable. There is two-way communication, and because many of us have worked our way up and perhaps experienced life in a toll booth or processing data, we have real and natural empathy for many of the issues that are raised. It doesn’t mean we can solve them all, but it goes a long way to making people feel heard and valued.
What were your biggest challenges along the way?
For me, the challenge was adjusting to life in Türkiye. I have Turkish parents, but was born and raised in France. I considered myself half-Turkish, half-French. In reality, I was probably neither! It meant I was given a partial manual to a culture I thought I knew, but I didn’t. The process of adapting was useful, though. It helped me understand how values shape behaviour and how history influences reactions. It made me want to welcome ‘difference,’ and I think that helps make for stronger teams overall.
We hear daily about the possible impacts of AI on our lives and working processes – how do you see the impacts in the road O&M business?
We talk about this with our teams. They are young, willing to learn and adapt. We see it as a way to bring even more innovation on stream, rather than a threat. We already use drones for patrolling and inspections. For example, in Kazakhstan, our team are now using AI with ANPR cameras to detect incidents on the motorway and intervene more efficiently. These are two ideas that were developed in-house by our teams and recognised in the 2026 Egis Innovation Awards.
Looking ahead, what is your focus now?
I have always said we should prepare for unpredictability. We don’t know what change is around the corner, but here in Türkiye, we are accustomed to dealing with it. Whether it’s the price of bread, natural disasters, economic policy or constitutional change, we have faced instability in the past, and so now we continue to focus on building resilience and on pushing the boundaries, being the best at what we do. That means constantly examining what we do, not just in terms of process but also in terms of wider impacts, being trailblazers. In the last two years, we have started conserving rainwater so that we can make our own brine (for anti-icing and de-icing), preserving scarce public supplies for local communities. Our focus is on constant innovation, with an emphasis on the environment and on social impact. The challenge to innovate and improve runs throughout the organisation and keeps people motivated. I tell my teams, you are superheroes. Not visible when there is no problem to solve, but totally important and appreciated for the 1% of the time when things go wrong. Perhaps we should give them all capes!
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The Gebze-Izmir motorway consists of 433 km of highway (2x3 lanes) between Gebze, on the northern shore of Izmit Bay and Izmir, with a 2.907 m long suspension bridge crossing the bay of Izmit, three tunnels with a cumulative length of 6,430 m (two tubes 12,860 m) and 22 toll plazas. Egis and the concessionaire, Otoyol A.Ş., are 50/50 shareholders in the project's operation and maintenance company. The contract began in 2014 and was renewed for a further 10 years in February 2026. Today, the team in Türkiye are a centre of excellence for Egis Road Operations.