TYH Tekstil, a 26-year-old Turkish apparel manufacturer that produces for international brands including Lacoste, Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger, has closed seven of its 13 factories. Board chair Selçuk Mehmet Kaya told the business site Ekonomim that the company is in concordat proceedings, the Turkish court-supervised restructuring process, and that economic pressures forced the decision.
Kaya said the company had employed 6,900 people across its 13 plants and now has 1,900, meaning it parted ways with about 5,000 staff. He said the cuts fell mainly on the ready-to-wear side of the business, and described the people who left as skilled employees who did their jobs well, according to BirGün’s report of his comments.
The closure follows the end of production at Orta Anadolu in Kayseri, a 73-year-old denim mill that BirGün says made fabric for brands such as Diesel, Replay, Guess, Mustang and Levi’s and employed around 1,500 people. Reports on both cases cite rising production costs against a stable exchange rate, weaker export and domestic demand, and low capacity use as the main pressures.
Toygar Narbay, president of the Turkish Clothing Manufacturers’ Association (TGSD), put the sector’s losses in context: according to BirGün, he said 362,879 registered jobs and 10,624 workplaces have been lost in textiles and apparel since December 2022, accounting for 64% of the registered job losses in all of Turkish manufacturing over that period. He also noted the two sectors still produced a net trade surplus of $15.8 billion in 2025 and called for them to be declared strategic.
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Photo: Dormen Cerimonia collection by Dormen Cerimonia, a member of the TurkishFashion.net directory. Courtesy of Dormen Cerimonia (view the collection).
