Turkey's Rising Religious Elite

[themuffinman]

Turkey's Rising Religious Elite

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"The new class is sharing their habits, like driving Mercedes, but they are also wearing head scarves," Paker said. (Google)
CAIRO — Shunned for decades by the country's secular elite, Turkey sees the rise of a new generation of business people who have the wealth while fulfilling their religious duties.

"Muslims here used to be tested by poverty," Sehminur Aydin, an observant Muslim businesswoman, told The New York Times on Friday, December 26.

"Now they're being tested by wealth."

Long dominated by the secular elite, Turkey now sees the emergence of a new class of observant Muslims with business empires.

"The new class is sharing their habits, like driving Mercedes, but they are also wearing head scarves," said Can Paker, chairman of the Istanbul-based Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation.

"The old class can't bear this."

For decades, wealth was dominated by urban upper class, often referred to as White Turks, who saw themselves as the transmitters of the secular ideals of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Turkey's founder.

They felt threatened by the rise of the rural, religious merchant class.

"The old (secular) class was not ready to share economic and political power," said Paker.

"'They were the peasants,’” said Paker. “‘Why are they among us?"

New Elite

Aydin, the businesswoman, recalls the secularists' reaction whenever an observant Muslim businessman shows up.

"If you’re driving a good car, they stare at you and point," said Aydin, 40, whose father started as a curtains vendor and he now posses one of the largest home-appliance businesses in Europe.

At an incident, a woman called the hijab-clad a "dirty fundamentalist" when she tried to put trash the woman had thrown out her car window back inside.

But the observant business people took this into their stride.

"You want to say, 'I graduated from French school just like you,' but after a while, you don't feel like proving yourself," said Aydin.

The rise of the observant Muslim business people has been of much profit to the Turkish economy.

"We can't lie down on our oil like Arab countries," said Osman Kadiroglu, whose family owns a large candy company in Turkey, with factories in Azerbaijan and Algeria.

"There's no way out except producing."

Now, Turkey's economy is the seventh largest in Europe.

The country also exports billions of dollars in goods to other European countries, and about 70 percent of its population lives in cities.

The rise of the new business class, however, is marred by some excessive practices.

"Now, unfortunately, there is a taste for luxury, excessive consumption and comfort, vanity, exhibitionism and greed," said Mehmet Sevket Eygi, a 75-year-old newspaper columnist.

The country's economic capital, Istanbul, is No. 4 in the world on the latest Forbes list of cities with the highest number of billionaires.

Luxury cars stud its streets. Shopping malls, 80 at last count, are mushrooming.

Islam urges followers not to consume more than one needs.

"You have money, but do you buy whatever you want?" said Recep Senturk, a sociologist at the Center for Islamic Studies in Istanbul.

"Or should you keep a humble life? This is a debate in Turkey right now