CEO Series: Burak Akgül on Turquoise Yachts' milestone launches, long-term goals and the state of yacht building in Turkey

When Patrik von Sydow stepped down as CEO of Turquoise Yachts at the end of November 2025, the Turkish shipyard turned to one of its own: board member and executive director Burak Akgül, who took the helm with immediate effect. Akgül brings more than three decades of industry experience to the role, including a lengthy tenure with Italian builder Perini Navi (now The Italian Sea Group). 

In conversation with BOATPro, the CEO reflects on his first year in the job, the yard’s recent milestone launches, why owners should have confidence in Turkish yacht building and what lies ahead for Turquoise...

What was it like stepping into the role of CEO and what were your immediate priorities?

I think many would say there may have been an expectation that sooner or later something like this would happen, although it wasn't, frankly, my first preference. Patrik [von Sydow] and I worked very well together, and I was, to be perfectly honest, very happy not to have the burden of that responsibility again. However, having taken it on, I'm glad to be doing so. 

I'm honoured to lead this particular company, which, on a personal level, I've always had enormous respect for because of what the founding partners – Mehmet Karabeyoğlu and Necdet Salgür, and of course the late Hayati Kamhi – did for Turkish shipbuilding that no one else had done. They absolutely established the benchmark, as far as I'm concerned. I'm Turkish, but I've always lived abroad, and as a Turk in this business looking in from outside, this was the one company you always saw for a very long time. So today, to be in the midst of that with this team is fantastic.

Burak Akgül

As for priorities: the immediate one was to complete Angelique and N2H as quickly as practicable, with as little additional strain on the owners as possible. We've done that for Angelique, and we're now in the thick of it with N2H - hopefully we'll have her completed soon enough that we can have both yachts at the Monaco Yacht Show. For this company, that's a long-overdue opportunity to have our latest deliveries physically present in Monaco, because that hasn't happened for far too long.

What is your vision for the company and what's the strategy you and the team are pursuing together?

I think Turkey's economic situation today obliges us to really focus on how we can differentiate, because the old assumptions simply no longer hold. I'd like to think that Angelique – and N2H and Nympheas before her, and Infinite Jest before that – have, to the extent our industry has seen them, started to open eyes to a progression, rather than a distinction, in what Turquoise is designing and building. 

We work with exterior and interior designers, of course, but we do all the engineering ourselves and with each yacht we try to do better. So our objective has to be progressive improvement, to justify the commercial position we're obliged to take today given the cost levels in this country.

Have you made any major changes or pivots within the company since becoming CEO and, if so, what were they?

I think this company's human capital is its most significant asset. So, frankly, the short answer is no, not yet - and I'd respectfully say it would be way too presumptuous to make that kind of change this early, in a production reality like ours where the cycles are so long. Our focus first and foremost has been getting these two yachts delivered. Then we can start on the things we do want to change. 

Efficiency is key, and there's a lot of room to be more efficient - that's where we need to concentrate next: improving the efficiency of our processes and the way we do things. We have a lot of blue-collar labour, unlike many businesses in ours, so we have plenty of scope to improve there and be more profitable as a company.

You've touched on Angelique and N2H, but they're pretty major milestones - not just for the shipyard, but for Turkey. What do these builds represent?

Angelique is a floating jewel box, if I may say so, and I mean that with the greatest respect - she's magnificent. Everyone in our business who's had a chance to see her out there has been pretty gobsmacked. If you want to look at it that way, she redefines the benchmark of what we do.

N2H is just as accomplished, but unfortunately nobody's seen her yet - we haven't been able to show her to anyone. I've had one professional and one client aboard; both were gobsmacked, but two people in an entire industry don't help much. Interestingly, N2H actually keeps professionals on board longer than Angelique, because of the sheer number of features built into that yacht compared to what you'd expect for her size – and I'm not just talking about the diesel-electric hybrid system, which is important, but the lifestyle features built in one after another: genuinely unique things. So it will be really interesting to see the reaction to that pair.

What it means for us is that, beyond establishing a new benchmark, I hope the professional community and prospective owners will appreciate the breadth of capability this group possesses. We have something like sixty-odd engineers and naval architects across our design, engineering and project management teams, who create and monitor the process that ends up with what you see out there. That gives us a unique opportunity to offer a client something different: they can build their yacht in a relatively shorter timeframe, because we can leverage the platforms we've not just designed but built - we have four or five of them right now.

Segueing on to that – you've got a major refit underway at the moment. Is this something you want to expand more into – the refit side of the business – or are you more focused on new construction?

We have a certain discrete capacity - basically our four sheds. So there's an opportunity to fill the smaller sheds, and the 60-metre sheds especially, with refit work. That said, our fleet now – which numbers just under thirty vessels – is clearly an important source of refit business in itself. 

We recognise we're not necessarily going to be competitive for someone who just needs a quick bottom job and wants to leave again – crews don't like to come this far east for that kind of work, given the hub of Palma, the South of France and so on. The additional time it takes to get here counts against us for that. But for longer-term refit projects, this is something we do value.

The opportunity we've been given here is rather unique: over 20 years of ownership by the same owner – his second boat, incidentally – who then sold her on to Dr Al Barwani. He's chosen to enhance the vessel to his family's taste, and that's exactly what we're doing right now. So we'll be able to show something of what we do in that sense as well. Yes, why not, it's not our primary focus, but it absolutely is a focus.

What would you say is Turquoise's speciality in the market, and how will you continue to develop that differentiation?

If we want to break it down simply: custom yacht building on distinct platforms. We have four platforms, in size ranges running from just under 1,000GT all the way up to just under 3,000GT. Our principal focus is maintaining that variety and uniqueness across established platforms, in a way that lets us reduce delivery time.

Something not entirely public yet, but certainly part of our DNA and our focus for the future, is the opportunity for an owner to indulge a passion for sailing with us. We have the 42-metre Wildcat here - a very distinct sailing yacht in today's market. 

There was originally meant to be a series of three 42-metre sailing yachts at Perini Navi: one never materialised and ended up completed at Vitters as a different yacht; the first of the two that did proceed is still in Italy with her original owner, who's now completing that vessel; and the second hull was bought by Dr Al Barwani and was brought here - she'll be sailing the Med next summer as a Turquoise. 

We also have another project, Rainbow II, at our other facility. So there's absolutely no question that we'd aspire to be an alternative for someone who wants to build a sailing yacht. 

Having spent the amount of time I have around large sailing yachts personally, I'm a little disappointed to admit that not many people want to build them any more -  that's a different problem altogether. But we'd certainly never turn our backs on someone who came to us wanting to build a sub-500 GT sailing yacht, or even the next size up, around 70 metres - that's something I'd take very seriously.

Should prospective clients be worried about the current economic environment?

Turkey's interest rates are actually falling right now, so that's a good thing - we have relative stability. That can be debated endlessly, but the fact is we've all suffered cost increases from the pre-Covid era to today, driven by something that has nothing to do with the rest of Europe. The misalignment between Turkey's inflation rate and the rate at which the Turkish lira depreciates against foreign currency, particularly the dollar, means the lira has appreciated dramatically in real terms from an inflation perspective. 

That's increased our costs and obliges us to concentrate on quality and efficiency in a way that, before, we might have been able to absorb without worrying so much. We can no longer shy away from efficiency.

From a client's perspective – and I can only speak for Turquoise, not the country in general – I believe we offer a certain value that's hard to beat in our part of the market. Whether everyone else does is a different matter; they'd need to answer that for themselves.

Finally, how would you describe your plans for Turquoise?

To be very candid, this is a difficult business – no joke – because you have very long build cycles, and once you start them, you really can't stop them. Everyone talks about spec builds, but starting and stopping them is a dangerous game. We'd all like to think we've found the solution, but it's not easy.

Our short-term goal, beyond delivering our latest yachts, is to establish a commercially sustainable model where spec builds are being sought after earlier in their production, rather than later. That's the focus we need to create. I'd like to think these two yachts at Monaco, and the shift in perception among some of our friends and peers – settling any doubt some may still have – will let us approach the commercial side differently.

Medium- and long-term means larger. I doubt we'll be able to stay as competitive at the smaller end of our range, where we're already outside the 500GT bracket anyway, compared to the value we can offer at the larger end – where very few yards can actually build a vessel for someone who wants something bigger. With our 80-metre platform vessels Bravo and Rafale nudging the 3,000GT bracket, we now have a completely different level of in-house know-how for engineering and production compared to two or three years ago. 

So we can comfortably take the next step and break the 3,000GT barrier into the next size range – we already have the physical infrastructure to accommodate that, which is itself an important advantage, and we have the human capital to meet it. That needs to be our next goal.