Dig beneath your notions of Turkey's piety and backwardness. Instead of a Muslim culture alien to EU values, you'll find one open for business, writes Mary Fitzgerald
The arrivals hall in Kayseri's tiny airport can barely accommodate the dozens of passengers who have just landed on the mid-afternoon flight from Istanbul.
In the crush, local women in headscarves jostle with Japanese sightseers and French backpackers, while businessmen in pinstripes tap at their mobile phones. The tourists are here for the Anatolia of a thousand postcard images, the starkly beautiful landscapes and quaint villages of "the other" Turkey, a place often dismissed as backward and impoverished by the country's urban sophisticates.
But the men in suits have arrived to do business with an altogether different Anatolia, the one whose economic boom and thrusting development challenges the old Kemalist orthodoxy that to be modern, successful and forward-thinking, you must push Islam aside.
Nowhere is this more evident than in Kayseri, the buckle in Central Anatolia's wide belt. Located on the old Ottoman silk route, the city has a history of trade dating back centuries. Its inhabitants have long been the butt of jokes poking fun at their shrewd ways with money and ability to haggle down to the last lira.
Neither of these things, however, fully explains how this city of one million deeply devout and conservative Muslims transformed itself within a generation into one of Turkey's biggest manufacturing hubs. So many successful entrepreneurs have emerged from Kayseri and its surrounding towns that analysts have dubbed them the "Anatolian Tigers".
The area's textile companies make clothing for brands including Calvin Klein, Zara and Marks and Spencer. Executives boast that 1 per cent of the world's denim is produced here.
Furniture manufacturing is another major industry - if a piece of furniture is Turkish-made, chances are it came from Kayseri. Firms that originate from the city include Istikbal (the furniture company whose blue-and-yellow-fronted shops can be found in Turkey and across the Middle East) and Boydak Holding (one of the country's biggest conglomerates).
Stories of how dogged determination led to financial success abound, like the man who turned the small workshop where he worked as an apprentice furniture-maker into an international firm registering €75 million in annual sales.
Pointing at a map of Kayseri's new industrial zone - one of Turkey's largest - Ahmet Hasyuncu, head of the development board, reels off a dizzying tally of figures. Tens of thousands of workers. More than 700 factories.
The entire area is criss-crossed by 48 avenues. In 2004, he explains, with a flourish of his pen, the city's maze of industrial parks was nominated for the Guinness Book of World Records for laying the foundations of 139 new businesses in a single day.
Yet Kayseri the boomtown in many ways still reflects its location at the centre of the country's rural heartland, a place synonymous with the values of Islamic Turkey - pious, socially conservative and proud of its traditions.
This is a city where few restaurants serve alcohol and women wearing headscarves outnumber those who do not. A city where delivery trucks have "All Belongs to Allah" emblazoned in flaming lettering on their mud flaps.
A city where photographs of Mecca and ornately-decorated verses from the Koran hang from boardroom walls. A place where many factories have specially- built prayer rooms and where one of the city's biggest mosques is located in the middle of a sprawling industrial area. A city, many of its inhabitants say, where strong faith is the backbone of successful business.
"We are proud of being Muslim and proud of being good at business," says Soner Tuna, an engineer responsible for planning a light-rail network for workers to commute to the numerous industrial estates that ring the city. "A baby born in Kayseri is a baby born a trader and a Muslim. We want to play our part in the modern, global economy, and we don't see this as contradicting our religion. It's quite the opposite, in fact."
Kayseri's mayor, Mehmet Ozhaseki, agrees. "People here look at work as a form of prayer. The Prophet Muhammad told Muslims they should work for this world as if they will never die and work for the world after this as if they will die tomorrow. This is our religion, this is what we live by."
Ozhaseki is a leading member of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), the political party with Islamist roots that swept Turkey's last parliamentary elections.
The AKP's policy of "democratic conservatism" and its strong pro-business slant have proved popular with the pious capitalists of Central Anatolia.
In the 2004 municipal elections AKP candidates formed a 70 per cent majority in Kayseri, the party's highest in the country. Deputy prime minister and foreign minister Abdullah Gul of the AKP is among the city's most-famous and best-loved sons.
One of Ozhaseki's mayoral predecessors, Sukru Karatepe, was struck by the parallels between Kayseri's transformation and the theories of Max Weber, the German economist who argued that the "this-worldly asceticism" and strong work ethic of Calvinism had contributed to the rise of modern capitalism.
"For Kayserili, working hard is worship, saving is worship and helping others by investing back into the community is worship," says Karatepe, a former academic. "This is very close to Weber's conclusions about the Calvinists."
It was a comparison that quickly gained currency and soon Kayseri's bemused Anatolian Tigers found themselves labouring under a catchy new tag - Islamic Calvinists.
Part of this was as a result of a report published by the European Stability Initiative (ESI), a Berlin-based think tank. The authors concluded that "individualistic, pro-business currents have become prominent within Turkish Islam", and a "quiet Islamic Reformation" was taking place in the hands of savvy Muslim entrepreneurs.
"It is hard to say whether the rise of 'Islamic Calvinism' among Kayseri's entrepreneurs is a cause of their commercial success (as per Max Weber), or whether increasing prosperity has led them to embrace interpretations of Islam that emphasise its compatibility with the modern world," the report noted. "Either way, it appears that a new generation in Central Anatolia has made its own peace with modernity. Economic success has created a social milieu in which Islam and modernity coexist comfortably."
The juxtaposition of Islam with Calvinism has proved controversial, with some national commentators debating over whether the description is well-meaning or a stealthy attempt to proselytise.
Ozer Tuncay, a manager at textile firm Birlik Mensucat, laughs when asked about it. "It's something we don't think about too much. Business is business, and it is a natural part of our religion. Our Prophet encouraged us to devote 90 per cent of our time to work, so, as Muslims, there is nothing unusual about our work ethic."
Aside from the work ethic, the austerity associated with Calvinism is also evident in Kayseri. There are no four-wheel-drives clogging up the city's tree-lined avenues, and the houses in its wealthiest enclaves would be considered relatively modest by European standards.
"People here live like puritans," says Safak Civici, who runs a furniture company with her husband. Born and raised in Stuttgart, Civici describes herself as an avowed secularist and proud Almanci, the often-derogatory word used to refer to those Turks who emigrated to Germany and then returned home. "Kayserili are very clean-living. There are no discos and not many restaurants where you can buy alcohol.
"No one drives a Porsche or a Ferrari - they don't want to show off and be flashy even though they can well afford it."
So what do people do with their money? They plough it back into the community. Philanthropy is big here, a testament to Islam's emphasis on charity. The city boasts privately-funded schools, clinics, sports venues and community centres.
"The sense of investing back into the community and fostering civic pride is very important," says Civici.
One of only three women working at management level in Kayseri, she acknowledges that the participation of women in the local workforce should be higher. According to the ESI report, the employment rate of women here is 37 per cent, compared with 74 per cent for men, with a majority of women still employed as agricultural workers.
These figures owe much to deeply-held traditional views of the role of women, views that emphasise the importance of being a wife and mother.
An EU report published this week criticised not just Central Anatolia but Turkey for not doing more to encourage women to work outside the home.
Civici remembers receiving a female entrepreneur of the year award in Istanbul and being asked what difficulties she faced as a businesswoman in the region.
"Maybe it was an advantage for me not to be from Kayseri. In that I didn't have to deal with gossip or opposition from my family. I haven't received any negative response from local people, but of course you try to accommodate and respect the way things are done here.
"When I'm at the chamber of commerce, for example, I always try to talk a lot about my husband and children to show I'm not that different. It makes them more comfortable and respectful, although I have to say that Kayseri people respect hard work whether you're male or female."
The city's mayor says efforts are under way to bring more women into the workforce, including the setting up of training courses and small co-ops. "People are realising that, in today's world, it is not enough for just one person to work in order to sustain a household."
Just as they see no contradiction between piety and modernity, most of Kayseri's business people see no contradiction in a predominantly Muslim country like Turkey joining the EU.
Their experience in transforming the conservative, agrarian heart of Central Anatolia into an economic powerhouse, they say, demonstrates that Islam, capitalism and globalisation can be compatible.
"Kayseri is a model for what Turkey can achieve," says Ahmet Hasyuncu, who also owns a textile factory. "I consider myself already part of Europe - I sell more than 75 per cent of my products there. Many Europeans believe our religion is blocking Turkey's development, but the experience of Kayseri and other regions challenges this. If you make the effort to look beyond the stereotypes, you will see a different Turkey emerging, a Turkey that can compete.
"At the moment the Anatolian Tigers are merely growing up. This is just the beginning. We have a lot to share with Europe - both now and in the future."