Istanbul aims to outshine Dubai with $2.6 bln Bank Center

20:40, 2 October 2012

ISTANBUL. October 2. KAZINFORM It's now little more than a dusty patch of land in the modern suburb of Atasehir on the Asian side of Istanbul. Within three years, if all goes according to plan, high-rise office buildings will dominate the site, forming an upstart Wall Street on the Sea of Marmara: the Istanbul International Financial Center.

Prime minister Erdogan is putting Turkey's considerable economic power on display in eastern Europe and the Middle East, Bloomberg reports.

With a gross domestic product of $770 billion, the Turkish economy expanded by 8.5 percent last year, third-fastest among the Group of 20 industrialized nations, after China and Argentina, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Like a lot of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan 's ideas, such as his push for mostly Muslim Turkey to start formal membership talks with the European Union, the square-mile International Financial Center is bold, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its October issue.

Erdogan, whose Justice and Development Party won re- election last year, envisions Turkey as a burgeoning economic as well as political power in the Middle East and southeast Europe.

IFC-Istanbul, as it is known, would be the steel, glass and concrete embodiment of Erdogan's vision, says Kubilay Cinemre, who stepped down as chief executive officer of Merrill Lynch & Co.'s Istanbul office in 2010 to establish his own fund management company, Fokus Yatirim Holding AS .

With the IFC up and running, Environment and Urbanization Minister Erdogan Bayraktar told reporters earlier this year, "Istanbul will assume its historical role as a global center of commerce."

By some measures, Istanbul, straddling Europe and Asia, with 13 million people, is on its way there already. The financial industry has grown along with the world's 16th-largest economy.