Turkey´s religious businesspeople 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 businesswoman and the daughter of a manufacturing magnate. "Now they´re being tested by wealth."
Some say religious Turks are failing that test. 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," Aydin said.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/26/europe/turkey.php
