Editor’s Note: Charlie Dee reached out to Farm Equipment offices after seeing the first-ever Farm Equipment Dealer Hall of Fame, which included a posthumous honor of Orhan Yirmibesh, also know as  “The Turk.” The Turk was a trend-setter in many ways, and Dee explains below the impact that the immigrant dealer Yirmibesh had on a new dealer-principal.

As a young new farm equipment dealer in Northeast Iowa with many smaller farms, our dealership had a need for good used farm equipment. So we started to purchase lease return tractors from a couple of dealerships in Wisconsin.

One of those dealers was “The Truk” Orhan Yirmibesh, in Clinton Wis. My wife, Donna, and I would go to visit the Turk and she would stay and visit his wife, Ruth, while Orhan and I would go to his dealership. I would purchase some of his lease-return tractors.

We became good friends and even stayed overnight with Orhan and Ruth occasionally in Delavan Wis., as we purchased the lease-return tractors.

I grew up in the farm equipment business but wanted nothing to do with it when I got out of high school. But after getting married in 1969 my father’s health were failing, and my wife and I had to decide whether to go into the farm equipment business or not. At that time, I was working in the engineering department at Trane Co., the air conditioning manufacturer. So, we returned to New Albin, Iowa, and formed a partnership with my father, Clinton Dee.  

Of course, with young energy, we had lots of ideas how to grow the farm business, and one of them was selling good used lease-return tractors, which we purchased in Wisconsin.

During one visit with Orhan, he encouraged me to consider leasing equipment to canning companies. When I returned to Iowa, I searched out regional canning companies and found a few that I contacted. The canning companies in our area had some interest and wanted more information.

As I was new and didn’t know how to make a contract with them, Orhan graciously offered to help by using a contract template he had. So, Donna and I started a company called Dee Leasing Service Inc. to manage the new business venture. Everything was going well, and we signed a lease for 5 Oliver 1555 tractors with Galesville Canning Co. in Galesville, Wis. During those years there was a shortage of farm equipment, and it was on an allocation basis, so I was unable to get the 5 Oliver 1555s from the factory. Of course I was discouraged after putting out the effort to get the business started. Orhan again helped by giving me 5 of his allocated tractors and he would retain 5 he had previously leased and release them another season.

We became good business friends to the point Orhan suggested I sell my dealership in New Albin, Iowa, and join in partnership with him. We even discussed how that would look. But Donna and I had committed to my father when we moved back to New Albin, so I decided to remain and grow the New Albin, Iowa, dealership. We’d eventually add Waukon and Decorah, Iowa, to our dealership locations.

Dee Implement has become a dealership that thinks creatively in developing new business ventures in the international markets and leasing equipment to canning companies and seed corn companies and growers. Orhan’s example of thinking “outside the box” has had a great impact on our business development.

Inaugural Farm Equipment Hall of Fame Class of 2024: Orhan Yirmibesh, 1914-1999

According to Clinton's historian Tom Larsen, Orhan Yirmibesh was an Istanbul native who attended an all-male Turkish boarding school from age 8 on and graduated from American Robert College. In 1936, he arrived at the Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison to pursue a graduate degree in economics.

It was there that he found love in Ruth Zeidler, who’d changed his career trajectory.

Read more about Orhan Yirmibesh here.