August 14, 2025
Since I was very young, I have been both familiar with and interested in shopping and the buying and selling of goods. Naturally, I grew up in a family engaged in commerce. Together with my siblings, we learned craftsmanship and commerce from our father and uncles and we learned how to buy things from the marketplace—and how to bargain while doing so—from our mother. As I grew older, I witnessed the transformation of shopping culture and marketplaces. What interested me most was the change in food retailing and the evolution of different categories of sales outlets. Those who are forty and above will know very well: the “bakkal” (the small neighborhood grocery store) was the most common and important point of purchase during our childhood. And I believe people of the same age group will also remember Ferhan Şensoy’s play Kahraman Bakkal Süper Markete Karşı (The Heroic Grocer vs. the Supermarket), first staged in 1991. As children and young people growing up in the 1990s, we felt and observed the message conveyed by our late artist’s play deep down: the storm created by change in the retail ecosystem that had already taken place in many Western countries was reaching our country as well, nothing would ever be the same again.
Click to read the rest of the article.