Firuz Kanatlı

Firuz Kanatlı (1932 – 18 October 2017) was a Turkish businessman and founder and honorary president of the well known company Eti.

He was born in Eskişehir, Turkey in 1932. He attended primary school until the third school year, after which he went to Galatasaray High School in Istanbul and graduated from there. He studied business administration at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. When he returned home, he started to work in his father's flour mill, the "Gümülcineli Flour Mill". The factory would later be renamed to "Kanatlı Flour Mill".

The dream of establishing his own business lead Kanatlı to search for a work branch. His grandparents' first millstone-flour mill "Gümülcine" (Turkish for Komotini, a city in East Macedonia and Thrace of Greece) led him to reconnect with his family history, and led him to the idea to produce pasta. As sugar was easy to find in the sugar refinery nearby, he decided to branch out into the cookie business.

The only cookie brands in Turkey at the time were "Arı", "Ülker", "Besler", "Haylayf" and "İdeal", whose factories were all in Istanbul. His business brought cookie production to Central Anatolia. He wanted to bring his business onto the market under the name Bal (Honey), which had its trademark rights claimed by another business. He opted to create the brand under "Eti" (Turkish for Hittites) instead, and began production under the name in 1962.