Enka İnşaat ve Sanayi A.Ş. (stylized as ENKA) is İnşaatveSanayiAŞa Turkish engineering and construction company based in Istanbul. Enka provides construction and engineering services through its subsidiaries in approximately 30 countries across the world. As of 2017, Enka was the largest construction company in Turkey.
Company
Enka is a global engineering and construction company headquartered in Istanbul, Turkey. In addition to engineering and construction, its operations include energy, real estate, trading, and manufacturing. The company has been involved in the construction of power plants, airports, bridges, pipelines, motorways, business towers and shopping centers. Mehmet Tara is president and chairman of the board, as of 2022. As of May 2017, Enka employed 31,237 people. Enka is publicly traded in Borsa, Istanbul (BIST).
Enka has employed approximately 200,000 people in its projects abroad. The company has carried out around 500 projects in more than 30 countries including Albania, Algeria, Cameroon, Kazakhstan, Libya, the Netherlands, Nepal, Oman, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, Tajikistan, and Ukraine.
Enka was listed at #270 on Forbes "Global 2000: World's Best Employers" in 2017.
History
Enka was founded in 1957 in Istanbul, Turkey, by 27-year-old Şarık Tara and his brother-in-law, Sadi Gülçelik. Tara and Gülçelik chose Enka as the name of the company from the first syllable of two words, "enişte" and "kayınbirader" meaning "brother-in-law". Gülçelik died in 1980 in a Saudi Arabian airplane crash and Tara became the sole proprietor. Around the same time, Enka began acquiring larger scale projects, increasing their rank as one of the top 250 international contractors.
In 1972, the company established Enka Pazarlama, a sales-focused subsidiary for several earthmoving equipment and construction machinery brands. The following year, Enka founded Cimtas, one of the company's fully owned subsidiaries. The company expanded internationally during the 1970s and 1980s.
Sarik Tara passed the company to his son, Sinan Tara, in 1984. Sarik was 56 years old, and Sinan wanted to preserve Enka's tradition of having young leaders. Sarık Tara's grandson, Mehmet Tara, became CEO at age 29.
The Enka Moscow office opened in 1987. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Enka delivered goods and services, ultimately building a strong business relationship with Russia. The company collaborated with the Moscow city government in 1995 to build the MosEnka development. In the mid-1990s, Enka built a second investment company, Moskva Krasnye Holmy, building offices, shopping centers, and recreation facilities across Russia.
In 1997, Enka and the Turkish company Migros founded RamEnka in a joint venture, building shopping centers across Russia. Enka acquired all of RamEnka stock when Migros sold their half of the company in 2007. Enka had built 10 shopping malls in Russia by 2000. The company has been regarded as one of the main providers of construction services in the Russian market since the 1990s.
Projects
Enka's earliest projects include the İstinye Highway Bridge and the Babaeski-Kuleli road construction in Istanbul. In the early 1970s, Enka, in a partnership with German company Wayss and Freytag, built the Ortaköy viaducts and the Bosphorus Bridge. Enka continued to expand internationally in the 1980s with the award of the 1981 housing development contract in Al Medinah, Saudi Arabia, in a joint venture with the company Kutlutas.
Throughout the early 1980s, Enka worked on different kinds of projects in the Middle East, such as water treatment facilities and cement plants. During this time, Enka built Turkey's first natural gas power plant, the Trakya Natural Gas Combined Cycle Plant. In 1984, Enka, in collaboration with Toyo, completed the construction of the Iraq-Turkey Crude Oil Pipeline Expansion project.
Enka undertook various construction projects in the late 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, including the Bekhme Dam in Iraq, the Petrovsky Passage in Russia, and the Ankara-Gerede Motorway, in a partnership with Bechtel. Around this time, Enka was also responsible for the construction for the Russian Federation Government House, known as the "White House".