International Business Forum : une tentative de régionalisation par la bourgeoisie islamique turque en « Afro-­Eurasie » ?

Preliminary Material

“…A succession of corruption scandals (fostered by unbridled liberalisation in the absence of regulatory mechanisms), the negative social effects of the Customs Union with Europe and, finally, the 1996 Susurluk scandal-which revealed to the public, for the first time, the interdependence of elements of the security apparatus, the mafia and various co-opted Kurdish leaders-were all an implicit reinforcement of the legitimacy of Refah Partisi, which advocated the observance of Islamic morality (Massicard, 2008;Buğra and Savaşkan, 2014). The Welfare Party was a nationalist, positivist, Islamic, developmentalist and anti-capitalist project characterised in particular by a desire for reconciliation with the Kurdish population and hostility to the European project and to Turkey's membership of nato (Yankaya, 2014). The party was hence likely to challenge the hegemony previously exercised by senior civil servants, including those in the military, a hegemony supported by part of the national bourgeoisie.…”

“…Presented at the end of 2014 under the auspices of President Erdogan and several Turkish ministers at the 15th International Fair of müsiad, High-Tech Port officially aims to place Turkish know-how at the service of 'brother countries' to ensure no 'clash of civilisations' but a Muslim 'civilisational competitiveness' vis-à-vis Western countries (Dünya, 2015a). This project, presented as a 'showcase' for Turkish technological excellence, was again at the heart of the meeting held in October 2015 in Qatar, in tandem with the International Business Forum, which was then devoted to 'partnerships in industry and defence between Islamic countries' (Yankaya, 2014 and. A binational fair exclusively dedicated to the fostering of Qatari and Turkish companies was organised under the auspices of the Turkish President, Prime Minister and Minister of Defence and the Qatari Sheikh Bin Hamad bin Halifa es-Sani.…”