Turkey

Sarsılmaz traces its origins to Abdüllatif Bey, who made and repaired flintlock rifles in Elazığ in 1880.^{2, 3} In Huğlu, craftsmen who had served in army weapons units during the Balkan and War of Independence campaigns taught gun repair to their neighbours on their return.⁴ Blacksmiths repaired the metal parts, while carpenters and cart makers repaired the woodwork.⁴ The village’s limited agricultural resources encouraged its craft trades and commerce.⁵ The Mevlana Development Agency traces the Beyşehir district’s gunmaking to 1914, with workshops beneath houses in Huğlu, Üzümlü and Gencek.⁶

Celal Yollu opened his first workshop in 1959, where he did repairs and made a single-barrel shotgun.⁷ The 1960 coup stopped shotgun manufacture, marketing and related economic activity, and Huğlu’s residents sought permission to resume.⁸ Emin Fahrettin Özdilek visited in 1961 and advised the makers to form a cooperative.⁸ The Huğlu Hunting Firearms Cooperative formed in 1962 with 165 members and brought pricing, quality control and marketing into one organisation.⁸

In 1965 the cooperative acquired lathes, milling machines and other machine tools and powered its central workshops with a generator, while members continued to work by hand at home.⁸ Barrel steel came through intermediaries from France and Germany until, after 1967, the cooperative began importing it itself.⁸ Electricity reached Huğlu in 1972, allowing more powered machinery and higher output.⁸ The cooperative then moved to domestic steel, and it opened a factory building in 1980.⁸ Huğlu added over-and-unders towards the 1980s, then semi-automatic and pump guns in the early 1990s.⁹

Celal Yollu, meanwhile, produced side-by-sides in Kayseri in 1967 and over-and-unders in Düzce in 1973.^{10, 11} He moved to Istanbul in 1990 to keep closer contact with world markets, and in 1992 he produced a semi-automatic hunting shotgun under the Vursan name.¹² In 1997 he founded ATA with Fatih and Yavuz Yollu, beginning production with the CY series.¹³ Beretta Holding’s Stoeger factory in Istanbul dates from 2000 and makes semi-automatic guns, pumps and pistols.^{14, 15}

Beyşehir’s industry began seeking overseas customers in the late 1990s.⁶ The development agency links its stronger turn towards exports to the shrinking domestic market after the 2001 crisis, higher taxes and harder licensing.⁶ Huğlu reports exporting 80 per cent of its shotguns to more than fifty countries, including the United States, France, Norway, Lebanon, Botswana, Chile and the Philippines.⁹ In 2007 Yıldız’s markets included Europe and the United States.^{16, 17} In 2023 ATA reported a 90 per cent export share and sales in more than 75 countries.¹⁸

The agency’s 2016 survey describes factory work alongside subcontracting businesses in Gencek, Derebucak and Kayabaşı, whose residents also worked in factories in Huğlu, Üzümlü and central Beyşehir.^{19, 20} In 2021 local schools made parts for arms and shotgun companies, where their graduates could find work.²¹ By 2025 specialised arms industrial sites were under construction in Huğlu and Üzümlü, alongside the developing Beyşehir organised industrial zone.^{22, 23} Huğlu and Üzümlü have vocational schools, and Huğlu vocational college runs a technician programme for the weapons industry.²⁴