Towards a comprehensive agency-based resilience approach: Myopia and hypermetropia in the Turkish wine industry

1 Introduction

The Turkish wine industry presents an interesting case to explore firm behaviour, institutions and regional economic resilience. There are cultural, economic and political reasons for this. First, making and promoting an alcoholic beverage in a Muslim-majority country is quite challenging. Although there is no specific law in modern Türkiye that prohibits the consumption of alcohol, wine drinking, like consuming all other alcoholic products, is still religiously unacceptable for a significant proportion of the society (Aydın 2011). This inevitably suppresses local demand for wine. As of 2023, the annual wine consumption per capita is only 1.3 L, which is far below the European average (26.4 L) (World Population Review 2024). Second, with political Islam gaining popularity over the past two decades, the local industry has been subjected to persistent adverse national policies. The enactment of a series of strict rules regulating the production and trade of alcoholic products have gradually compelled wine makers to confront a slow-burn organisational crisis. Added to these, the conservative government’s controversial alcohol taxation and pricing policies have made the Turkish wines price-wise exorbitant for local consumers. Under these conditions, many producers do not have the necessary skills to manoeuvre institutional challenges, therefore economic survival depends on local agents’ own capabilities.

Understanding the resilience of an industry as such calls for an institutionally nuanced and agent-centric micro-level focus. In mainstream literature, resilience is conceived as a desired property at aggregate level. It refers to regional systems’ ability to resist, recover and adapt to various disturbances (Martin and Sunley 2015). Shocks, however, are seen as the unwelcome instances that, over time, could harm regions’ growth paths in output, employment and wealth (Hundt and Grün 2022). According to the conventional approach, a region is deemed to be resilient if it could quickly move back to its pre-crisis equilibrium or reach a new and acceptable state of balance after a shock (Evenhius 2017). An alternative view to these interpretations is the evolutionary conception, which views resilience as a dynamic, continuously evolving and open-ended process. Here, the emphasis is made on reorganisation and adaptability, rather than any form of equilibrium (Boschma 2015; Simmie and Martin 2010).

In addition to these system-based explanations, we have been witnessing the development of a different approach, referred to as the agency perspective. This approach gives particular importance to human behaviour and brings an understanding of how various individuals, multiple agents, and organisations behave in response to different shocks and contexts. In this setting, a tri-polar conceptual framework developed by Bristow and Healy (2014) is noticeable. Within this framework, “human behaviour”, “collective agency”, and “agendas” are suggested as three analytical pillars. Simply put, behaviour refers to how socioeconomic actors respond to shocks. Collective agency, on the other hand, denotes how the different actors and agents are typically organized, or, alternatively, the actors’ inherent ability to work together. Finally, agendas represent the boundaries of actors’ interests; they refer to how actors interpret, articulate, and make sense of various shocks and how this influences their responses.

Despite there still being little analysis of how the aforementioned micro dimensions relate to the overall resilience of a region’s economy, there seems to be consensus in economic geography literature regarding the importance of incorporating the human element into the examination of regional economic resilience. Martin and Sunley (2020), for instance, view “agency and decision-making” as a crucial resource connecting the four subsystems of a region’s resilience: industrial and business structure, labour market conditions, financial arrangements, and governance arrangements. They argue that various psychological factors, such as expectations, perceptions, and attitudes, directly influence how resilient a region or city is against shocks; thus these factors deserve detailed investigation. Similarly, Hu and Hassink (2020) position “local agency and actions” at the heart of their conceptualisation, distinguishing adaptation from adaptability and providing integrated impact factors and determinants affecting regional economic resilience. They claim that regions differ in resilience mainly due to geographical differentiation in economic and political conditions alongside dependence on local agents’ perceptions of and responses to multi-scalar environments.

Nevertheless, including agentic processes in resilience discourse is highly arduous. Economic behaviour and decision-making are particularly complex and unpredictable. Furthermore, they are contextual, path-dependent, and contingent (Bathelt and Glückler 2003). One of the agency perspective’s main challenges is comprehending the intricate interplay between people-driven dynamics and history-sensitive, context-emergent structures, which in turn leads to geographically uneven processes, patterns, and degrees of resilience. Consequently, as many scholars rightly argue, place and context are inescapable in the understanding of human adaptations and regional economic resilience (Bristow and Healy 2020a; Gong and Hassink 2017; Tan et al. 2020).

In line with this argument, we observe significant work in progress, which provides valuable insight into the micro-level strategies and mechanisms resulting in resilience (Doern 2017; Evren and Ökten 2017; Williams and Vorley 2017). In these studies, context is often equated with action space, or in other words, cultural, economic, and institutional settings that frame decision-making. Temporal and cognitive dimensions, however, are often neglected. Individuals’ cognitive capabilities to consider the past and the future, and their competencies in coping with risks and uncertainty are largely excluded from analysis.

The literature also suffers from chronic partial thinking in both theory and practice. We observe, on the whole, a one-sided analysis, where attention is focused on resilient action and non-resilient behaviour is rendered almost invisible. Such an insulated account becomes highly problematic when resilience is conceptualised from a dialectic perspective. Learning from failure is often the key to success, making these seemingly opposing notions rather interconnected and interdependent. With that being said, the underrepresentation of actor-level incompetence in academic research partly calls into question the agency perspective’s conceptual strength as regards providing a holistic explanatory framework.

Our aim, in this paper, is to broaden the agency-based account of resilience by stretching the debate towards the disciplinary boundaries of economic geography (Barnes and Christophers 2018), from where we can develop intellectual links with psychology and hopefully enrich our conceptual toolbox. Taking the aforementioned drawbacks as a point of departure, and inspiration from the writings in contemporary behavioural economic geography (Clark 2011, 2018, 2022; Huggins and Thompson 2019; Strauss 2008, 2009), we argue that context deserves a wider perspective when analysing it under the resilience debate’s umbrella. This perspective is constituted of four pillars. Space and time, as Clark notes (2018), are the two important descriptors of the situation in which economic agents make decisions. Integration of institutions and cognition as the third and fourth pillars into context gives promise of a better understanding of human rationality. We also argue that there is much value to be found in socioeconomic actors’ ineptitudes if they are carefully examined. The analysis of non-resilient behaviour can provide valuable insight for resilience literature, as it sheds light on the challenges that individuals and communities face when coping with adversity. By examining the agentic conditions that impede resilience, we may be able to reach a comprehensive understanding. Consequently, we suggest a balanced and integrated treatment of both resilient and non-resilient behaviours.

We would like to discuss these arguments in the case of the Turkish Wine Industry. Producer firms of the Thrace wine-making cluster in the northwest corner of Türkiye constitute our empirical focus. The study featured here is mainly based on semi-structured qualitative interviews with owner-managers of small and medium-sized enterprises across this region. We seek answers to the following research questions: In their struggle for survival, which strategic actions do Thracian wine-makers take? Do these producers differ in their evaluation of risks and uncertainty? And if so, which agent-specific cognitive factors (strengths and weaknesses) influence this process?

The remainder of the paper is organised as follows: The next section discusses the agency perspective of resilience and delivers our theoretical contribution to it. This is followed by the methodology. A brief overview of the Turkish wine industry is presented in section four. The fifth section focuses on the empirical core of our research. Here, we illustrate the kinds of strategies small businesses adopt and how and why these strategies may result in resilience and/or vulnerability. The paper then concludes with a summary of the main argument as well as some policy implications.

2 Rethinking the agency perspective

What exactly makes the agency perspective of resilience valuable? And further, how can the tri-polar analytical framework proposed by Bristow and Healy (2014) be developed in the context of economic geography? Our first question necessitates a theoretical repositioning of this perspective within the wider debates of our discipline. To begin with, we can assert that this perspective arose from a tradition in which economic determinism is heavily criticised and any positivist commitment to equilibrium is abandoned. By including the human element, the agency perspective tilts the resilience literature towards relational economic geography – an understanding which views economic action as social action (Bathelt and Glückler 2011). Furthermore, it encourages researchers to contribute to an interdisciplinary discussion of contingency at the nexus of psychology, sociology, organizational theory, economics, and geography. Acknowledging that human agency and behaviour operate through different rationalities paves the way for studying resilience as an open-ended process.

In connection with this issue, Harris and her colleagues introduce the notion of negotiated resilience to explain that resilience “… is not something that ‘exists’ as a fixed outcome or that can be uniformly defined, instead, it requires iterative engagement with diverse actors, interests and across time and governance scales” (Harris et al. 2018: 197). According to these authors, resilience is a dynamic and continual process of organised improvisation, in which economic agents contest with each other and make complex trade-offs. Similarly, health scholars Aranda et al. (2012) present the idea of resilience unfinished to describe the elastic nature of resilience. As they argue, resilience is a social construct that is formed relationally through individuals’ ongoing practices and is always incomplete.

It is noteworthy that the agency perspective provides academia with a good opportunity to discuss the distributional aspects of resilience. Disappointingly, ‘resilience for whom’ is a rarely asked question in the mainstream literature. When we speak of an industry’s or a region’s resilience we assume a homogeneous entity from the very beginning and categorise it as either resilient or non-resilient. Yet, the reality is that resilience is not shared evenly and fairly among the parts that make up the whole. We could even argue that resilience for certain individuals or locations may result in others losing their resilience (Davoudi et al. 2012). This is not surprising, of course, given the nature of capitalism that creates various social, economic and spatial inequalities; it is especially important because it confronts researchers, especially policymakers, with the selective nature of resilience. At this point, the agency perspective’s high power objective lens, which allows analyzing regional economic resilience down to its DNA, helps us to distinguish who is resilient and who is not.

When we follow this line of thinking, we find ourselves in agreement with Simon and Randalls (2016). According to these authors, at the individual level, “everyone is at least somewhat resilient” (2016: 9). This suggests that resilience appears as a matter of degrees rather than a clear-cut duality. In this context, the agency perspective sets the opportunity for various diverse questions about the emergence of resilience. For example, where does resilience come from? Which inherent capabilities of economic actors make them more (or less) resilient than others? Equally, how is resilience earned? Which practices and mechanisms are effective in coping with adversity? The answers to these questions compel us to ask, as Simon and Randalls admirably did (2016: 10), more political questions, such as: who is asked to be resilient, who is deemed to be resilient, how did they obtain this, can others get it, and who claims to give it or teach it? To make a long story short, the real value of the agency perspective may lay in the fact that it invites us to investigate various mechanisms via which resilience is learned, instilled, negotiated, and manifested in different settings and across different actors, needs, interests, and capabilities.

Regarding the development of the agency perspective, one possible avenue is to reframe resilience as an institutionally filtered psychological asset in decision making. In this context, cognition as a source for the objective and subjective responses of individuals to material conditions merits further conceptualisation. Drawing on this, the article employs a dialectical vision to resilience. It seeks to establish a theoretical framework that facilitates an explanation of how agents’ inherent systematic anomalies and biases restrict their resilience and the notion of myopia serves as the basis for our argument.

2.1 Towards an analytical framework

In his seminal work, Clark (2018) approaches decision-making through the lens of behaviourism. He tackles the problem of how people’s choices and actions differ in the face of risk and uncertainty. According to him, how we cope with risk and uncertainty largely depends, among other things, on our ability to balance short-term and long-term concerns. Clark argues that for most people, valuing the remote future is more problematic when compared to assessing the immediate future. He calls this situation temporal myopia. He also argues that people are “spatially myopic in that they tend to value opportunities close at hand and discount opportunities far away” (Clark 2018: 202). This is, of course, nothing different from the well-known phenomenon of the home town effect, or, in Clark’s words, home bias. Nonetheless, he carves out a novel analytical template that sheds light on the decision-making problem. Somewhat differently, Maskell and Malmberg (2007) investigated myopia in the context of learning, knowledge creation, institutions, and cluster evolution. Their conceptualisation is also two-fold: spatial and functional. While the former aligns with Clark’s arguments, the latter pertains to micro-level constraints that drive individuals to seek solutions that are similar to established routines. In other words, functional myopia functions as a barrier to institutional change at the actor level.

Although the notion of myopia has mainly been conceptualised in the literature with reference to uncertainty and customary behaviour, a reconceptualization in the context of resilience and producer behaviour is also possible. In this research, we regard myopia, whether temporal or spatial, as a form of cognitive limitation, a resilience-restrictive condition of vision, from which economic agents (producer firms, especially the individuals within firms) suffer. If, as Clark (2018: 200) puts it, “[individual decision-making] is located at a particular time, with regard to past experience and expectations about the future, and in a particular place, with regard to local circumstances and other possible action spaces” then making rational resilient decisions requires a strong agency that can confidently travel among here, now, there and the future. A healthy economic agent with a clear vision would be in a better position to weather the storm than one with the above-said spatio-temporal deficits.

Extending this argument further, we would like to offer the notion of hypermetropia, another cognitive limitation, as a conceptual innovation and provocative step forward. In ophthalmology, hypermetropia denotes a visual condition characterised by clear vision of distant objects but impaired vision of nearby ones. In economic geography, it might be seen as the reverse of myopia. In their struggle for survival, some economic agents may experience difficulty making sound decisions in the short-term, especially when they blindly follow a leader. From this viewpoint, temporal hypermetropia could be associated with poor management skills and lack of business acumen (Clune and Downey 2022). Some economic agents, on the other hand, may be spatially hypermetropic; they may ignore the opportunities in their vicinity because of their prejudices against their own business community stemming either from informational asymmetries or stereotypical expectations. In this context, it could be argued that these blinkered agents can behave very differently from the way a commercially alert, visionary and open minded resilient economic agent, or what we call homo resiliens, behave.

In addition to these considerations, we also argue that both myopia and hypermetropia of varying severity may co-exist in the same region and accompany diverse agendas and adaptive strategies at the actor level. Figure 1 illustrates an analytical framework comprising four distinct potential scenarios. According to that, box C symbolises economic agents characterised by minimal levels of visionary defects. Individuals classified under this group possess the ability to assess and evaluate potential risks over a longer span of time, subsequently making informed decisions and taking appropriate measures. In addition, they have the capacity to tap into local information and resources, effectively integrating them with those originating from remote locations. From a theoretical standpoint, it may be posited that out of the four groups under consideration, this group exhibits the highest probability of survival in the event of a crisis.

Figure 1:

Interaction between spatio-temporal myopia and hypermetropia. Source: Authors.

Boxes A and D represent hypermetropic and myopic decision-makers, respectively. The former individuals are theoretically the second most resilient economic players, following those categorised in group C, because they can see far into the future and, as a result, can take timely measures to deal with upcoming crises. In return, they could easily miss out on opportunities in their own backyard. The latter group of agents, on the other hand, exhibit completely opposing characteristics. Their severe spatio-temporal myopia renders them vulnerable to shocks. Such producers, as observed in the region of Thrace, tend to offer only locally confined, short-term and temporary solutions to address the challenges they face. Last but not least, group B is potentially the most disadvantaged group since its members have both of these severe cognitive deficits.

Depending on the economic agents’ personal qualities and the complexity of the decision, myopia and hypermetropia could intersect with other non-rational personal dispositions. For example, a myopic economic agent would also be prone to exhibiting status quo bias, displaying a preference for maintaining his or her present or prior situation rather than taking action to address a crisis and navigate through periods of uncertainty. Loss aversion (Kahneman and Tversky 1979) is another emotional bias a decision-maker with myopia could experience. In that case, losses compared to gains are weighed more. A closely related cognitive predisposition here is risk aversion, which may lead individuals to prioritise local opportunities above the potential benefits of more distant and untested alternatives.

Regarding hypermetropia, on the other hand, psychological inertia (Gal 2006) is a prevalent companion, which refers to a tendency to refrain from intervening in the prevailing trajectory of events. In this scenario, economic agents may, either voluntarily or involuntarily, engage in a process of self-isolation from their immediate business environment, thereby navigating the challenges independently. In certain instances, this condition may be accompanied by various unfavourable personality traits that can be perceived as resilience killers. Long-term arrogance is one of them. The antagonistic type, as stated by Cowan et al. (2019), in particular, holds the potential to limit or even prevent the resilience of a local business community that aspires to develop collective agency. These comorbidities could exhibit a protracted or chronic nature, contingent upon a wide range of contextual conditions, as we will illustrate in our case study.

Having said that, we need to clarify the following point. The emergence of non-resilient act at the individual level cannot be attributed to myopia and hypermetropia alone. Institutional structures play an important role too. Routines, conventions, norms and value systems do not only enable and constrain local agents’ behaviours (Rafiqui 2009), but also function as a filter, a transparent social interface or a lens, between biased intentions and actualised behaviour (Huggins and Thompson 2019). In the latter case, a “good” institutional lens is crucial for correcting the individuals’ visionary defects and thereby increasing their chances of being resilient economic agents. Of course this is not to suggest that myopia and hypermetropia can be reversed or cured permanently. One can make the bold claim that these unsound internal predispositions can lead to resilience-destroying action, specifically in the absence of wider (and good) institutional structures and social mechanisms that monitor agents’ choices and actions, alert them to their shortcomings and impose necessary societal boundaries across time and space.

Besides the unfiltered and direct consequences of myopia and hypermetropia, associated long-term risks may have damaging effects on meso-level learning processes. Economic agents with severe spatial visionary flaws are more likely to have low absorptive and desorptive capacities, meaning that they may either experience difficulties in “recognis[ing] the value of new, external information, assimilate[ing] it, and apply[ing] it to commercial ends” (Cohen and Levinthal 1990: 128) or “transfer[ing their] own knowledge to external partners” (Lichtenthaler and Lichtenthaler 2010: 166). These hidden risks could accumulate over an extended period, damage local communication and information networks, trigger cognitive lock-in (Grabher 1993) and in the long run may even result in the development of inward looking, low-growth and outward-looking, hollow clusters (Bathelt 2009). At this point, key leading local agents, such as technological gatekeepers (Giuliani 2011) and knowledge integrators (Buciuni and Pisano 2018), can be crucial in order to eliminate these risks and ensure regional economic resilience.

3 Methodology

Winemakers in Thrace exhibit notable heterogeneity across various dimensions. Our empirical study of the local industry reveals a multi-tiered pyramid structure of manufacturers, at the top of which are Türkiye’s oldest and largest companies in this sector, each with an annual production capacity of more than one million litres. These corporations, with a total of six, have a number of contractual relationships with vineyards throughout Thrace, in addition to possessing their own plantations on their respective premises. Some of these companies have multiple production facilities across Türkiye. Additionally, they hold the position of being the prominent grape buyers in the country, thereby possessing the capacity to exert considerable influence over national pricing dynamics of grapes. Although their narrative of resilience is equally compelling, it is beyond the scope of this paper. The primary emphasis of our empirical study is directed towards the bottom tiers of the pyramid, encompassing a larger population of small and medium-sized firms that suffer from various degrees of myopia and hypermetropia and exhibit diverse agendas, production organisations, and resilience strategies.

We started our empirical research by obtaining from the Department of Tobacco and Alcohol (in Turkish TADAB, previously TAPDK) a complete list of legally authorised wine producers in Türkiye. This list included some basic information, such as the licensee’s identity, company name, and wine production address. Then, we supplemented this list with additional information (year of establishment, vineyard area, production capacity, and tourism activities) gathered from a variety of sources, including sectoral reports, oenotourism guides and corporate websites. From this, we created an integrated database for a total of 40 SMEs operating in Thrace by 2019 with annual production of less than one million litres.^[1] Based on our analysis, we categorised these enterprises into three distinct groups according to their economic operations that necessitate particular knowledge and expertise (Figure 2). Group III comprises wineries that solely focus on wine production. Group II consists of wineries that not only produce wine but also own vineyards. Lastly, Group I encompasses wineries that not only have vineyards but also offer tourism facilities to enhance their overall visitor experience.

Figure 2:

The pyramid structure of winemakers in Thrace. Source: Authors.

The producers belonging to Group III lie at the very base of the pyramid, as illustrated in Figure 2. We call those winemakers the laggards. Within this specific classification, there are a total of 24 enterprises. These small-scale, family-owned firms are primarily engaged in the production of table wines, with winemaking serving as their exclusive economic activity. Given their lack of vineyards, it is evident that they have to depend on the presence of diverse grape farmers within the local vicinity and maintain arms-length relationships with them. The average annual production capacity of the establishments in this group is 350 metric tonnes.

Producers that occupy the upper tiers of the pyramid, on the other hand, demonstrate distinct characteristics. Due to the considerable resemblance in the cognitive limitations of firms in Groups I and II, we decided to consolidate them into a unified group, denoted as competitive elites. Within this new category, we can identify a total of 15 enterprises. These establishments have a production capacity of an average of 225 metric tonnes of wine per year. Their vineyards cover an average of 1,060 acres. The entities here mainly consist of emerging boutique winemakers, a great majority of whom have established their presence in the wine business since the early 2000s. They produce commercial premium and/or super plus wines for the upper segments of the market.

In the fifth section, we will explain how myopia and hypermetropia restrict the resilience of each group. The narrative then turns to an account of a local technological gatekeeper (Giuliani and Bell 2005) who was discovered during fieldwork: a conciliatory winemaker with effective networking skills. This story merits mention as it demonstrates the emergence of a fragmented collective agency in Thrace. However, prior to proceeding, we would like to provide some further details regarding our research.

The empirical study was conducted between 2019 and 2022 in a qualitative fashion, utilising a total of 34 semi-structured interviews with varied actors. The participants consisted of owner-managers from 25 small and medium-sized firms, vice directors or employees of three large wineries, representatives of three local non-governmental organisations (the Association of Wine Producers, Wines of Türkiye, and Thrace Tourism Operators Association), as well as three Thrace-based wine experts. During the approximately one-hour-long interviews, we asked respondents a variety of questions regarding their establishment’s history, the changing conditions of wine production in Türkiye and Thrace, how they were able to adapt to these conditions, and their predictions for the future of winemaking. In addition to the field work, a wide range of secondary data has been analysed. This includes FAO and OIV statistics, annual reports, local policy-related documents, doctoral dissertations, and newsletters.

One of the biggest difficulties during the field work was accessing wineries that spread across the entire region. Some interviews required multiple site visits, despite appointments being arranged in advance. Turning this situation into an advantage, we conducted a second round of interviews with five owner-managers who were willing to discuss preliminary research findings. Building trust, as well as maintaining privacy and confidentiality during the interviews, was another methodological difficulty. Respondents from Groups I and II, in particular, made it clear that their comments were strictly off the record. Therefore, we did not get any voice recordings at the interviewees’ request. To eliminate any bias, we systematically organised our notes immediately after each meeting.

4 The Turkish wine industry

According to the statistics of the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) Türkiye is the sixth largest grape producer in the world (2022). It also ranks as the fifth biggest country globally in terms of vineyard surface area (413.377 hectares). However, when it comes to wine production, the country fails to utilise its potential. Even though the local wine industry has shown a consistent pattern of growth in recent years (Figure 3) and that wine production in 2021 reached a record-breaking volume of 82 million litres (Cabaroğlu 2023), Türkiye barely holds a disappointing 30th position within the global league of wine making countries. Added to this, only a fraction of production is exported every year, making the Turkish wines highly invisible in the world markets.

Figure 3:

Wine production in Türkiye (million liters). Source: Cabaroğlu (2023).

As of 2022, Türkiye has a total of 178 wineries, collectively capable of producing 160 million metric tonnes of wine each year (Cabaroğlu 2023). According to this, around 55 % of this capacity is owned by 9 large establishments, while 18 medium-sized firms together possess a capacity of 35 million litres, which accounts for 22 %. The remaining 23 percent of the total capacity is divided among the 151 small-scale wineries. Geographically speaking, the industry is mainly concentrated in the Aegean and Marmara regions, where the climate and soil conditions are favourable for grape cultivation. Within Marmara, the sub-region of Thrace is home to 46 wineries. In the three neighbouring villages of Thrace (namely Şarköy, Hoşköy, and Mürefte) in particular, there is significant clustering.

As far as the modern history of the industry is concerned, the past one hundred years witnessed significant developments that can be recorded in three consecutive periods. The first coincides with the Early Republic Era which covers from the establishment of the Turkish State in 1923 and transition to multi-party period in the mid-1940s. This was a distinctive period for Türkiye, an era of modernisation, in which a series of radical political and socioeconomic reforms were instituted, and wine industry was no exception. Indeed, those years saw the Turkish government breaking all religious taboos, lifting the ban on wine from the Ottoman Period^[2] and recognising the industry as a significant driver of local economic development. One important move was institutionalising the state monopoly in 1933 with the establishment of İnhisarlar Dairesi, a government organisation that was later renamed Tekel ^[3] in 1941. Through Tekel, the government ensured the stability of tax revenues from wine and effectively regulated both consumer and producer markets. From 1931 to 1944, Tekel set up eight fully state-owned wineries across the country in accordance with the vineyard regions suggested by French experts. As a result of these endeavours, Tekel gradually grew to become Türkiye’s leading wine manufacturer during the 1930s and the 1940s. In the meantime, private enterprises received a bundle of incentives (Doğruel and Doğruel 2000).

The second period was characterised as one of stagnation and revival. From the 1950s to the 1980s, the wine industry did not see sufficient attention at the policy level and, so to speak, was neglected by the government. During the aforementioned time frame, both Tekel and private SMEs encountered significant challenges in embracing novel technological advancements, resulting in the erosion of the industry’s prior economic dynamism. By the 1980s, however, Türkiye’s delayed neoliberal transformation, and the rapid tertiarisation process in particular, provided the local industry a window of locational opportunity. Increased demand from white-collar professionals and international tourists has compelled producers, who had previously been accustomed to making medium-class wines in the domestic market, to produce quality wines. Some writers claim that this was a time of great prosperity, a renaissance for the Turkish wine industry, during which wine finally gained popularity among upper-income consumers (Yalçın 2006: 62).

The third period has presented wine producers with a challenging chapter. This can be attributed to a dual paradigm shift at the governmental level. On one hand, the state’s role as a producer in the sector was terminated. In 2004, TEKEL was privatised and sold to a Turkish consortium. On the other hand, the state’s control over production has increased. In 2002, Tobacco and Alcohol Market Regulatory Authority (with Turkish abbreviation, TAPDK) was established. This move enabled the government to closely monitor the production and distribution of all kinds of alcoholic beverages, including wine. Later, in 2007 and 2009, respectively, two significant legislative measures were put into place: the banderol legislation and the prohibition on subcontract manufacture. These regulatory reforms had mixed impacts on the industry. While the informal wine trade largely ended, registered wineries experienced significant operational difficulties.^[4]

The year 2013, however, may be regarded as a turning point in the recent history of the local industry. That year, the government passed a controversial law regulating the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages. Under the new legislation, all forms of media are prohibited from featuring advertisements for alcoholic products. Any brand communication to customers is likewise absolutely restricted, which means that organising tasting events, engaging in sponsorship activities, and participating in trade fairs in Türkiye are against the law. Placing alcoholic beverage logos on business signs of sellers and sales units is also prohibited. Further to these, the legislation strictly bans the internet sales of alcoholic beverages. These changes, especially the prohibition on online sales, have made it extremely difficult for small-scale wine producers in Türkiye to reach consumers in their home market.

In addition to these unfavourable regulations and practices, it is important to note that wine makers in Türkiye have been burdened with increasing taxes over the past twenty years. In 2002, an additional tax (special consumption tax-SCT) was introduced on wine alongside the value-added tax. For about ten years, the government has implemented biannual increases in alcohol taxes, often in the form of double-digit percentage hikes. From 2012 to 2023, the SCT on wine increased by ten times.^[5] Very recently, the government announced that all alcohol producers will have to deposit 5 million to 50 million lira ($ 1,7 million) collateral to cover their taxes (Sezer 2024). For many small wineries, as reported by Sezer, that was “another nail in the coffin”.

5 How do myopia and hypermetropia restrict winemakers’ resilience?

6 Conclusions

The line of argumentation we employed in this paper differs from the conventional understanding of resilience in two ways. First, we explicitly incorporated the complexity of human behaviour and micro-economic action into resilience thinking. While doing so, we relied on the analytical framework of the agency perspective and further developed it by introducing the twin concepts of myopia and hypermetropia. This way, we were able to conceptualise various context-dependent mechanisms via which resilience is structured at agent level.

Second, we took the shocks and non-resilient behaviours more seriously, and studied them both theoretically and empirically. With the former, our study brings clarity to the understanding on how policy shocks accumulate and potentially transform into a slow-burn organisational crisis. With the latter, however, we believe that this rarely taken approach is a challenge to the pervasive positive narrative that dominates mainstream resilience literature. It provides us an alternative avenue of research in economic geography, from where we can learn how to avoid failures. At first glance, this line of thinking may give priority to the examination of factors that hinder resilience than those that promote it. Nevertheless, we provide a holistic approach towards achieving a more balanced analysis. We argue that the inhibitors and facilitators of resilience, whether at the individual or regional level, are inextricably linked and inherent to the same underlying reality. Therefore, it is important to consider both aspects in our conceptualization.

Our research, additionally, has some implications for the geography of wine industry literature. Our findings from a relatively less explored locale suggest that, the impact of adverse sectoral policies on local firms are heterogeneous and that there exists at least three types of winemaking firms in Türkiye depending on the agents’ agendas and cognitive (dis)abilities. The first type of firms, referred to as laggards in this paper, operate at the lower-end of the market and display hesitancy when it comes to broadening their operations. Based on our empirical observations, these firms exhibit a significant degree of inertia and lack any sort of foresight. Depending on their spatio-temporal myopia, the learning channels of these winemakers remain very limited, and most of them implement various temporary tactics to maintain their businesses activities.

The second type of firms, in contrast, place a high emphasis on producing wines of superior quality. Many of them collaborate with international experts, participate in international wine competitions, and make every effort to strengthen their worldwide knowledge and business networks. In addition to these, a significant majority of these enterprises have successfully expanded their operations into the hospitality sector. With these persistent efforts, it is possible to say that the wine industry in Türkiye has had a moderate upward trajectory and a kind of rejuvenation in recent years. However, a great majority of these elite establishments suffer from severe spatial hypermetropia. Because of their prejudices against producers from different backgrounds, they isolate themselves from the traditional winemaking community of Thrace, fail to acknowledge the collective soul of winemaking and miss out on local opportunities.

In addition to these two types of winemakers, it is important to note that there is a single case, a conciliatory winemaker, the strategic actions of whom are similar to technological gatekeepers that were described in the literature. This local producer, taking the advantage of his communicative skills and clear vision, acts as a potential bridge between the above-said two groups. Nevertheless, in the absence of good institutional structures, most of his efforts are underappreciated and the risks stemming from local agents’ myopia and hypermetropia are not eliminated.

From a sectoral policy standpoint, our research showed that in Türkiye, the government’s recent regulatory actions towards the wine industry have been discouraging rather than supportive. This attitude is in stark contrast to the one taken during the Early Republican Era. During the past two decades, the state’s production function was discontinued, a strict banderol system was put in place, and the use of subcontractors in manufacturing was outlawed. Additionally, advertising of alcoholic products and internet sales of alcoholic beverages were banned. Producers were also subjected to a substantial tax burden, and so on. In short, producing wine in Türkiye has increasingly become challenging. Under these conditions, the above-said firm heterogeneity holds crucial importance and should be taken into consideration. Any public policy initiative aimed at supporting the wine industry in Türkiye should focus on cultivating a Schmidian kind of appreciation of the natural polarities of micro-economic life. Instead of viewing non-resilient action and the cognitive defects behind it as unwelcome intruders in our ongoing pursuit of resilience, we should perhaps harness, as Wilhelm Schmid dialectically did for unhappiness in philosophy (2014), the very power of myopia and hypermetropia and try to learn from our shortcomings, lacking positive qualities, mistakes and failures. This way, a more resilient future for the Thracian winemaking community could be possible.