Keeping Jobs and Strengthening Social Cohesion: BİTAT’s Journey of Recovery in Hatay
November 10, 2026 | Navar Maarri
Based in Antakya, Hatay, BİTAT is a small food company producing and packaging a wide range of Turkish food products, from legumes, dried fruits and nuts to pasta, oils, sauces and jams. Since starting in 2015, the company has grown beyond Türkiye, with its products now reaching more than 30 countries around the world.
In February 2023, the earthquakes devastated Hatay and disrupted every part of daily life. In the first weeks, fear and psychological pressure made it difficult to work. Many people had been displaced, uncertainty was everywhere, and the company was struggling to pay salaries regularly.
But the company was also a source of income for the people who worked there. The team began supporting one another to return to work and keep the business going. For them, getting back to work was about more than the company. They wanted to keep people earning an income and, in their own way, help their city get back on its feet.
Across the earthquake-affected region, many businesses were facing the same challenge: trying to recover while keeping people in work. Through the Resilient Employment and Socio-Economic Development in Earthquake-Affected Regions of Türkiye (RE-SEED) project, businesses receive support to maintain formal employment and build more inclusive and stable workplaces as they recover.
But after the earthquakes, maintaining formal employment while the company was still under financial pressure was not easy. Through RE-SEED, Building Markets supported BİTAT with six months of support toward the employment costs of a refugee employee. This helped ease part of that pressure while bringing greater stability to the employee at a difficult time.
Around that employee is a diverse team of 12 people. Five are women, and Turkish and refugee employees work side by side. For BİTAT, diversity and equal participation mean creating a workplace where people from different backgrounds have the opportunity to contribute their skills, experiences, and ideas and be part of the company’s growth.
Social cohesion became another part of RE-SEED’s support. Management and employees joined the training together, opening conversations around communication, cultural differences and inclusion in the workplace. At the same time, more structured HR and internal systems were developed, covering recruitment, performance management, employee feedback and workplace concerns. For a business that has grown from Hatay to markets around the world, strengthening what happens inside the company is part of that growth too, giving the team stronger foundations as the business continues to expand.
Recovery is often talked about in big numbers, but much of it happens in small businesses like BİTAT. It happens when a business can keep its doors open, when people can keep building a future through their work, and when that business continues to have a place in the life of its community. Through RE-SEED, that is the kind of recovery we are working to support.
This support is provided under the “Resilient Employment and Socio-Economic Development in Earthquake-Affected Regions of Türkiye (RE-SEED)” project is co-funded by the European Union and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and implemented by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH in cooperation with the Union of Municipalities of Türkiye and Building Markets.
