[Marxism] Turkey's Muslim nouveau riche

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

NY Times, December 26, 2008
Newfound Riches Come With Spiritual Costs for Turkey's Religious Merchants
By SABRINA TAVERNISE

ISTANBUL ? Turkey's religious businessmen spent years building 
empires on curtains, candy bars and couches. But as observant Muslims 
in one of the world's most self-consciously secular states, they were 
never accepted by elite society.

Now that group has become its own elite, and Turkey, a more openly 
religious country. It has lifted an Islamic-inspired political party 
to power and helped make Turkey the seventh largest economy in Europe.

And while other Muslim societies are wrestling with radicals, 
Turkey's religious merchant class is struggling instead with riches.

"Muslims here used to be tested by poverty," said Sehminur Aydin, an 
observant Muslim businesswoman and the daughter of a manufacturing 
magnate. "Now they're being tested by wealth."

Some say religious Turks are failing that test, and they see the 
recent economic crisis as a lesson for those who indulged in the 
worst excesses of consumption, summed up in the work of one Turkish 
interior designer: a bathroom with faucets encrusted with Swarovski 
crystal, a swimming pool in the bedroom, a couch rigged to rise up to 
the ceiling by remote control during prayer. "I know people who broke 
their credit cards," Ms. Aydin said.

But beyond the downturn, no matter how severe, is the reality: the 
religious wealthy class is powerful now in Turkey, a new phenomenon 
that poses fresh challenges not only to the old secular elite but to 
what good Muslims think about themselves.

Money is at the heart of the changes that have transformed Turkey. In 
1950, it was a largely agrarian society, with 80 percent of its 
population living in rural areas. Its economy was closed and foreign 
currency was illegal. But a forward-looking prime minister, Turgut 
Ozal, opened the economy. Now Turkey exports billions of dollars in 
goods to other European countries, and about 70 percent of its 
population lives in cities.

Religious Turks helped power that rise, yet for years they were 
shunned by elite society. That helps explain why many are engaged in 
such a frantic effort to prove themselves, said Safak Cak, a Turkish 
interior designer with many wealthy, religious clients. "It's because 
of how we labeled them," he said. "We looked at them as black people."

Mr. Cak was referring to Turkey's deep class divide. An urban upper 
class, often referred to as White Turks, wielded the political and 
economic power in the country for decades. They saw themselves as the 
transmitters of the secular ideals of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Turkey's 
founder. They have felt threatened by the rise of the rural, 
religious, merchant class, particularly of its political 
representative, Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

"The old class was not ready to share economic and political power," 
said Can Paker, chairman of the Turkish Economic and Social Studies 
Foundation, a liberal research organization in Istanbul. "The new 
class is sharing their habits, like driving Mercedes, but they are 
also wearing head scarves. The old class can't bear this."

" 'They were the peasants,' " the thinking goes, Mr. Paker said. " 
'Why are they among us?' "

Ms. Aydin, 40, who wears a head scarf, encountered that attitude not 
long ago in one of Istanbul's fanciest districts. A woman called her 
a "dirty fundamentalist" when Ms. Aydin tried to put trash the woman 
had thrown out her car window back inside.

"If you're driving a good car, they stare at you and point," Ms. 
Aydin said. "You want to say, 'I graduated from French school just 
like you,' but after a while, you don't feel like proving yourself."

She does not have to.

Her father started by selling curtains. Now he owns one of the 
largest home-appliance businesses in Europe. Ms. Aydin grew up 
wealthy, with tastes no different from those of the older class. She 
lives in a sleek, modern house with a pool in a gated community. Her 
son attends a prestigious private school. A business school graduate, 
she manages about 100 people at a private hospital founded by her 
father. Her head scarf bars her from employment in a state hospital.

Her husband, Yasar Aydin, shrugged. "Rich people everywhere dislike 
newcomers," he said. In another decade, those prejudices will be gone, he said.

The businessmen describe themselves as Muslims with a Protestant work 
ethic, and say hard work deepens faith.

"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."

Fortunes were made, forming new patterns of consumption. Istanbul, 
Turkey's economic capital, 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.

"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, who has 
written extensively about Muslims and wealth.

An Islamic concept called israf forbids consuming more than one 
needs, but the line is blurry, leaving rich Muslims struggling with 
questions like whether luxury cars can be offset by donations to 
charity, a central tenet of Islam.

"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."

Islam requires that the wealthy give away a portion of their income 
to the poor. In the Ottoman Empire, it paid for everything from 
hospitals to dishes broken by maids in rich houses.

Donations to Deniz Feneri, one of the largest charities in Turkey, 
jumped almost 100-fold in the six years ending in 2006, when they 
topped $62 million.

Even house designs take charity into account. Mr. Cak described a 
multimillion-dollar house whose design included an industrial-size 
kitchen where food was cooked daily and distributed in trucks.

Ms. Aydin, for her part, supports 25 families. The real problem is 
not finding a place to pray on a busy day out (mall fitting rooms 
work), but being truly charitable and putting others first when the 
frenzied pace of life pushes in the opposite direction. She holds 
onto traditions, like Muslim holidays, tightly.

"The world is changing but I don't want to lose this," she said.

Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting.


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