Between a rock and a hard place: corporate elites in the context of religion and secularism in Turkey

Abstract

Drawing on discourse analyses of 36 in-depth interviews with elite business people from Turkey, the study identifies the networking patterns of new and established business elites in the context of economic liberalization and socioreligious transformation of the country. Through a comparative analysis of the so-called secular and religious elite networks, we demonstrate the role of institutional actors such as the government, and identity networks, based on religion and place of birth in shaping the form and content of social networks among business elites in Turkey. In order to achieve this, we operationalize Bourdieu's notion of theory of practice and Granovetter's theory of social networks, illustrating the utility of combining these approaches in explicating the form and content of social networks in their situated contexts, in which power and divergent interests are negotiated.

Keywords::

• business elites
• businesspeople association
• cultural capital
• social capital
• social network
• Turkey

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful for the support provided by Galatasaray University Research Fund. The authors would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.

Notes

^1. The original title of these associations can be translated as ‘Businessmen’ associations. However, all of them have female member as well. For this reason, throughout the paper, we preferred to use the term ‘Businesspeople’.

^2. Former imam and preacher who established an internationally active and politically powerful religious community.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Galatasaray University Research Fund [grant number 12.102.005].