City Life

15 November 2008

Are the Turks ready to be part of Europe? Brussels says no but Kylie says yes

If it’s not about religion, which Brussels unconvincingly insists it isn’t, then what’s Europe’s problem with Turkey? It’s not as if Turks don’t know capitalism, which is more than can be said for EU newbies like Romania, Bulgaria and — whoops, who’s that in IMF intensive care? — Hungary. Turks, Ottoman or Byzantine, were enthusiastic accumulators of lucre long before European manners determined it was filthy. Literally straddling Europe and Asia, Istanbul’s status as an international business centre is measured in millennia. Today, 75 per cent of Turkey’s trade is with Europe, whose banks control around 40 per cent of the country’s banking assets, having arrived after the financial crisis of 2001. That recovery cleansed and energised Turkey, making its financial systems, well, more European, though minus the subprime exposure. ‘The EU should have Turkey as a new member because it will add excitement and growth,’ insisted Suzan Sabanci Dinçer, the stylish 42-year-old chair of her family’s Akbank, one of Turkey’s big four private banks. ‘The big EU powers are slowing down. The world is shifting from West to East, and the EU needs an emerging market within its borders.’ Istanbul’s resident billionaire quotient is up there with Hong Kong, LA and Tokyo; it’s only the oligarchs that lift London’s tycoon tally above Istanbul’s. Turkey boasts a robust democracy informed by a vibrant media. What’s not to like, Senhor Barroso?

It doesn’t feel much like Brussels deep in the heart of Fatih, a so-called ‘religious’ neighbourhood of Istanbul. Few foreigners venture here but I went in search of dervishes, real ones, not the phonies who whirl for tourists at Topkapi. I was seeking something different to the throng of sharp-suited financiers and their arm-candy downtown. I was led to a cheerful backstreet Sufi mosque. Atatürk banned Sufism, believing its mystic rituals were too Eastern and backward, inhibiting Turkey’s post-Ottoman modernisation. But it’s still practised underground and as a dozen young men in flowing kaftans whirled, I wondered how Atatürk would regard the rapt audience of European Sufi devotees, the women all tightly scarved.