The Kemalist-socialist synthesis

Yet the spirit of "domestic goods week" never vanished. Özal's political opponents continuously accused him of deviating from the path of Atatürk, Turkey's revered founder. One of Atatürk's Six Principles was "statism," which was actually a practical solution in the years of global stagnation following the Great Depression. Moreover, Turks had the bad memory of the "capitulations," the unfair economic concessions given to foreign investors centuries ago, and which had been hazardous to the economy of the late Ottoman Empire.

After Atatürk, the combination of statism and the "anti-capitulationist" allergy to foreign capital became even more vindicated thanks to the rise of socialistic ideas among Turkey's intellectual elite. The same elite used to accuse the non-Kemalists — who came to power in 1950 during Turkey's first free and fair elections — of being agents of "American imperialism" and "international finance." Özal was the perfect scapegoat for the proponents of this "Kemalist left," but since 2002, there is an even better one: The Justice and Development Party (AKP) government led by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

AKP and Business

Not everybody in Turkey is the greatest fan of Erdoğan's government, especially because of its Islamic credentials, but virtually nobody can deny its pro-business attitude. As Wall Street Journal Editor Matthew Kaminski noted (in his Oct. 22 piece, "Turkish Tiger"), the government has initiated "the most far-reaching privatization program in Turkish history" and has created "a thriving Muslim market economy with a large, independent private sector and a shrinking state."

Local businessmen agree. "We see that the conditions of economic freedom are improving," says Jeffrey P. Kemprecos, the Istanbul-based Director of External Affairs of the Merck Sharp & Dohme Pharmaceuticals. "Generally, foreign investment and technology transfer is welcomed, and in recent years, Turkey has taken steps to ensure intellectual property rights."

Indeed attracting more foreign direct investment is one the government's most ambitious goals. Some of its staunchly secular critics accuse it of bringing in "Arab money," but it has been welcoming Israeli financiers as well. "Whoever wants to invest in my country is welcome," said Erdoğan in a famous speech. "Money has no religion or nationality." This is, of course, all bad news to the champions of the Kemalist left. They deeply abhor public religion and capitalism, and now they are getting both.

Globalization As Colonialism?

Those who are alarmed by the rise of what some have called "Islamic capitalism" are not only the campus Trotskyites but also some of the top officials of the state, including President Ahmet Necdet Sezer. In an address on Nov. 10, the anniversary of Atatürk's death, Sezer gave a reminder that Turkey had prospered in Atatürk's time "thanks to a fully independent economic policy." Turkey should resist globalization, the president added, "because it is indeed colonialism; they [the colonialists] couldn't succeed with guns, now they are trying it through economics." In recent years Mr. Sezer and the like-minded Constitutional Court have vetoed several new pieces of legislation that would have helped attract more "colonialism," i.e., investment. (That's why many foreign investors are unhappy about the never-ending impediments of "the bureaucracy.")

The country's generals seem to think along the same lines. Gen. Yener Karahano?lu, the chief of the navy, recently declared "imperialism and universal capitalism" to be the enemies of the Turkish Republic, along with "irtica," a euphemism for public Islam. The speakers of the main opposition party, the Republican People's Party (CHP), repeatedly echo the same messages.

And all this creates an interesting contrast with Turkey's age-old modernization rhetoric. A government with a Muslim outlook is championing economic freedom, whereas the secularists, who traditionally define themselves as "modernists" and "progressives," are standing against it. It is a new Turkey in which faith and freedom flourish hand in hand. Max Weber and Alexis de Tocqueville should have lived to see.