Turkey: It’s about the journey, not the destination

ZEKI ÖNDER, THE charismatic senior vice-president of Turkey’s Sekerbank, tells an anecdote about a busy Chinese development banker he was having a drink with in Beijing recently.

Their conversation turned to Turkey’s perennial tilt at European Union membership, and Europe’s lukewarm attitude to Ankara’s westward ambition. The Beijing banker questioned why Turkey even wanted to be there. "He told me that he felt sorry for European bankers," Önder recalls. "He said it was because there is nothing left to do there. ‘Look at us,’ he said, ‘we have a huge future to get excited about.’" Önder laughs. "And he was right."

Thoughtfully drawing on a cigar as he tells the story, Önder casts a philosophical eye from his eyrie over Istanbul’s fast-rising Levent financial district east to the Bosphorus and beyond, across Turkey’s great Anatolian steppe to Russia, central Asia and the Middle East and, as...