Would Apple ever have an HQ in Turkey?

Two days ago, I felt really good when I saw Deputy PM Mehmet Şimşek's tweet to Apple. It was an invitation to Apple, saying they should invest in Turkey instead of Ireland and get rid of European bureaucracy. Of course, I did not know about the 14 billion-euro tax punishment that the EU is demanding. I thought that Şimşek's call was about our innovative power, our young and educated minds or our competitiveness, but it was only about being able to lower taxes as we see fit. 

According to CNN Money, in 2014, Apple paid just $50 in tax for every million it made selling iPhones and iPads to most of the world outside America. That's a tax rate of just 0.005 percent. Apple has funneled most of its profits from Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India through Ireland for decades.

But under deals the company struck with the Irish government as far back as 1991, it was allowed to split these profits between its Ireland branch and an Apple head office that existed only on paper. Apple paid the standard Irish tax rate on profits booked to its Ireland branch. Those it allocated to the phantom head office were tax free, because under Irish law, it was then considered a "stateless company." In 2011, Apple Sales International made 16 billion euros in profits. Less than 50 million euros were allocated to the Irish branch. The rest went to the "head office," out of reach of any tax authority.

Similar deals were made with other tech giants too. 

Apple (AAPL, Tech30), Google (GOOGL, Tech30), Facebook (FB, Tech30), eBay (EBAY) and Twitter (TWTR, Tech30) have all set up their EU headquarters in Ireland. And with them came the jobs. Apple employs 6,000 people in Ireland, many of them making iMacs at a factory in Cork - once a deprived city in the...