摘要
In Turkey, banks having ＂Islamic＂ features that are long neglected have experienced strong business growth since 2003 that is just after the date of a moderate Islamic party which emerged victorious in parliamentary elections. While Turkey has only four ＂Islamic＂ banks, they capture more than 4% market share. The purpose of this research is to analyze the mechanisms that have allowed such a growth between 2002 （just after the financial crisis in 2001） and 2009, by comparing the results of activities of these four Islamic banks and find out possible opportunities that might exist in this sector. The results indicate that these institutions have a respectively higher risk-taking and internationally more fair open policy than the banks known as ＂conventional＂. While Bank Asya （the market leader of the participatory banks in Turkey） and Albaraka Turk capture the individual customers, the other two institutions that are TurkiyeFinans and Kuveyt Turk capture the commercial customers. In addition, the development of these institutions seems to be very difficult because of the lack of Turkish Sukuk in Turkish banking context having no adequate liquidity. Moreover, in its political context, leading actors in Turkish political and economic structure reject utterly the existence of Sharia Board. In fact, it is clear that the Turkish banking sector is an untapped potential market that could be easily converted into an opportunity by improving the regulatory framework and communication strategy for these institutions. Indeed, since the controversy still exists around the concept of secularism, which is an impediment to the development of these banks called ＂Islamic＂ in Turkey, there is a necessity for a communication strategy to break down prejudices and to become popular for Islamic finance sector, which is still known very poorly and superficially by general public in Turkey.
