For decades, the fulcrum of political debates regarding Turkey was the apparent clash between Islam and democracy. Now that a southeastern European and Islamic version of the western “Christian Democratic Party” model is in power in the country, that dilemma now seems to be outdated, though naturally not everyone shares this view. There are still doubts among European political leaders about the ability of the new “confessional” political class to bring about the reforms needed to qualify for EU membership. Such reservations could be entirely wrong, but the question now is of a different nature. The case in point is no longer politics and religion, but rather economy and religion. In Turkey, a new form of Turkish Islam is emerging, one which is pro-business and pro-free market. It's being called Islamic Calvinism.
In the Anatolian province of Kayseri, a new model of economic development is reshaping the productive structure of the country. New successful entrepreneurs – sometimes dubbed as the "Anatolian Tigers" – are giving a substantial contribution to what became in 2010 the world's 17th largest economy, with a GDP of $780 billion.
The famous book of Max Weber on the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism perhaps needs an additional chapter. The central thesis of Weber was not that religion is the determinant causal factor of economic development, but rather that there exists, between certain religious forms and the capitalist lifestyle a relationship of “elective affinity”. On that ground Michael Novak, a catholic thinker, wrote about the conditional compatibility between the Catholic Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Of all the questions raised by Novak, the possibility of economic competition in accordance with religious beliefs seems to be the most intriguing. For the Catholic thinker, a noncompetitive world is a world reconciled with the status quo. To compete - goes on Novak – is not a vice; on the contrary, it is “the form of every virtue and an indispensable element in natural and spiritual growth”. Some Christians would object to this thesis, recalling for instance the teaching of universal love and selflessness of St. Francis. Ironically, the Anatolian Tigers could easily subscribe to such a statement.
Central Anatolia, with its rural economy and patriarchal, Islamic culture, is often seen by Western Europeans as the heartland of a land far from modernity. And yet the prosperity reached in recent years in those eastern regions of Turkey has led to a transformation of traditional values and to a new cultural outlook that embraces hard work, entrepreneurship and development. That could lead to a sort quiet Islamic reform, bringing together, as Novak argued for Christianity, a solid blend of “democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is pluralistic and, in the largest sense, liberal”. To be sure, many questions remain unanswered. Is it religion or rather profit the incentive for production and investment? What about the socialization of profits (like in the experiment of the “Economy of Communion” of several Italian Christian entrepreneurs who divide up their profits in three baskets: a third for the poor, a third for culture and education, and the remaining for investments)? Finally, how could Anatolian capitalism be reconciled with the principles of Islamic finance and with the “problem” of interest?
It is curious to see that whereas Islamic finance is receiving more and more attention in the economic circles of the West – particularly after the financial crisis of 2008 – the Anatolian Tigers seem to adopt a Muslim (allegedly more ethical) form of Western turbo-capitalism. Paradoxically, whereas the capitalist model is more and more criticized in the Christian West, it seems now flourishing in a country with a Muslim majority. As for the liberal economic “Copenhagen criterion” (a functioning market economy capable of coping with competitive pressure and market forces within the Union) required for the EU membership, Turkey might be more qualified than some of the current member states, who no longer have a unbreakable faith in free market, and for a good reason. No surprise: it’s globalization, stupid! (First published as The Anatolian Spirit of Capitalism, "Longitude", February 2011)
