Ex-banker quits his job to become blacksmith
ÇANAKKALE- Anadolu Agency
A 35-year-old banker has quit his job to become a blacksmith to run a family business he wants to pass down.
Gökay Demiral, a university graduate who worked as a banker for years, is now the fifth generation blacksmith of his family in the western province of Çanakkale’s Lapseki district.
His grandfather, just days before he passed away, asked his grandson to continue the family business as a will. Years later, his father’s last will was the same. These two events changed his life. “My ancestors have been blacksmiths for four generations. Now it’s my turn,” he said, having quit his job to pursue this family tradition.
“It is tough. I work in front of a very hot forge of 60 degrees Celsius. But I love what I am doing. This is also the prophet’s profession. We don’t really get orders to make anchors, so these days we mostly make agricultural devices.”
He is the only son of the family to carry on the business. “When I was a kid, after school time, in the summers, I was with my father and grandfather here in the atelier. It is a passion… Warming and shaping the iron, hammering and giving life to it, is a great pleasure.”
“I am a university graduate. But I was here during all summers. Now today I am a master and I can make anything with iron. Ax, pocketknife, knife, sickle, anchor, animal bell. I was the only son. But I have three, and I will make one of them a blacksmith.”
He is only one of the victims to be hit hard by the coronavirus outbreak. “Sales are not good,” he said. But he is confident that the “virus will one day die, so now it is time for us to manufacture.”
