With all the patience in the world, 73-year-old Yetkin Sarkmaz is setting highlights for a regular customer on Thursday afternoon. He has had his salon on the Westermarkt in Tilburg for fifteen years, but his history as a hairdresser goes back much further. “I started at a hairdressing salon in Istanbul when I was thirteen and after six months I was cutting my own hair,” he says.
Although he has been doing it for sixty years, Yetkin didn’t start cutting because he enjoyed it so much. “I had to work so I couldn’t go to school,” he says. “At that time I got fifteen Turkish lira (about one and a half euros) for that. That’s not much, is it.” After years of gaining experience, he obtained his hairdressing diploma and in the 1980s the hairdresser started his own salon. That turned into a success, because he eventually employed fifteen people.
“I wanted to make sure my children had a childhood.”
Despite his successful business, he left for the Netherlands in 1992. He opened a hair salon in Waalwijk, then moved to the Wilhelminapark in Tilburg and has now been at the Westermarkt for fifteen years. “I never stopped and always continued working.”
Yet Yetkin did not come to the Netherlands to make a career. He had a successful business in Istanbul and said he earned even better there than here. But he went anyway, for his children. “I had to work from a very young age. I wanted to ensure that my children had a childhood. Here they can go to school, play outside and play football.”
“If he didn’t have this, he would just be an old man.”
The fact that family is important to Yetkin is evident from the fact that several family members now work in the business. His son took over, but that does not mean that the 73-year-old hairdresser can no longer be found there. He still spends 25 hours a week cutting and dyeing. “He enjoys the social contact the most,” says son Seçkin. “If he didn’t have this, he would just be an old man.”
Over the years, Yetkin learned to cut, updo and highlight better and better. But he also mastered the Dutch language in the salon. “I learned it myself through work.” That took trial and error, because he remembers all too well that one time things went painfully wrong. “There were always two sisters here, but one day only one came. Then she told a whole story, I tried to understand it and I said: ‘That’s nice’.” It wasn’t fun, because it later turned out that the other sister’s husband had died. “She didn’t like that very much, but she forgave me.”
“I have clients who say they will never go to the hairdresser again if I stop.”
After all these years, Yetkin still can’t stop thinking about quitting. “It’s actually just my hobby,” he says. “There are people who have already come to Waalwijk and still make the effort to come to Tilburg. There are so many hairdressers, but they keep coming. That is special.”
The difference with the past is that the experienced hairdresser now takes holidays more often. “I work for three months and then go on holiday for ten days.” Previously only to Turkey, but he has now also been to Spain and Italy. “I want to see more of the world.” But after those ten days he can’t resist and returns to his own trusted business again and again.