Murat Ustaoğlu

Public Awareness, Understanding and Attitudes towards Interest-free Insurance (Takaful) Services Evaluation by Education Level: Survey Based on Empirical Analysis for Turkey

Islamic scholars raise different opinions and views on modern insurance practices. Some hold that private insurance services and instruments serve as assurances that are allowed under Islamic law, whereas some others oppose this view arguing that there are serious doubts on their compatibility with Islam. Islam does not allow interest-based approaches and practices in the economic field; for this reason some Muslims are cautious vis-à-vis insurance services. Reactions by scholars to the insurance practices and implementation do not eliminate the needs of Muslims who want to regulate their daily lives by the Islamic tenets. Those who hold that conventional insurance practices are not compatible with Islam stress that there could be an alternative to this practice that would also be compatible with Islamic law. There are some versions of the companies created to address such concerns in Iran and Malaysia. Such institutions are pretty rare in countries such as Turkey, where Islamic finance receives little attention. For this reason, the study analyses the Takaful practices in Turkey and measures public awareness on this new practice. The results of the survey are tested empirically and some insights are offered accordingly.

The Turkish Economy and Financing Growth by Dual Banking: Empirical Evidence

The progress in the industrial revolution in the fields of science and technology led to production methods by attracting investments in the production factors. The change contributed to efficiency of the sectors and to the emergence of sustainable growth. Having resources that will finance new investments offers contribution to the national economy. The conventional model dominates the financial sector in most nations in the world, whereas some nations adopt the IF as an alternative. The presence of the two at the same time is called dual banking system. This study analyses the dynamics of the Turkish economy from a historical perspective, followed by an empirical evaluation of the impact of the CF and the IF in the growth rates with reference to selected real sectors.

Financing Economic Growth by Dual Banking in Malaysia: Empirical Evidence

The performances of the commanding height sectors including agriculture, manufacturing, construction, tourism and mining are crucially important for growth. To improve the productivity and competitiveness of these sectors, it is imperative to offer financial options and opportunities. Despite that Malaysia gained its independence recently, the country experienced a fairly satisfactory level of development. The contribution of the financial sector greatly influenced the success of the policies that offered solutions to the structural problems of Malaysia’s economy. For this reason, the Malaysian government has taken steps to improve the CF and IF. The stability of both sectors enables scholars to run a comparative analysis. This study seeks to provide a comparative analysis of growth based on empirical measurements of the impact of loans offered by conventional and Islamic finance.

Findings and Conclusion

The main purpose of the Islamic economy is to build a new model to meet the minimum needs of human beings and to maintain social peace and cohesion. To this end, it seeks to ensure that wealth is not concentrated in the hands of a few privileged men and capital holders and to create a balanced economic system that observes the interests of both the individuals and the society. As a solution, Islam places emphasis upon charitable activities which can be promoted by an economy that generates welfare. However, compared to developed nations, most Islamic countries perform poorly in terms of generating welfare even though they produce raw materials. The Islamic countries seeking to narrow the gap in recent years, rely on realistic development policies and support the real sector.

Economic Development and Financing Growth in a Hydrocarbon Economy: Qatar

The appearance of the cities in the Gulf has been for a while marked by luxury cars, glorious shopping malls and magnificent buildings. However, these cities are no longer as vibrant as they used to be because of the sharp decline in the prices of the hydrocarbon products. The slowdown in growth has led to some structural issues in the Gulf nations. The governments in these countries have for the first time introduced the idea of taxes. The administrators, now aware of the structural problems, made efforts to ensure that the economy would not depend on hydrocarbon products alone. This part of the study is focused on the impact of financial sector loans in Qatar upon growth rate.

Dual Banking Systems’ Dynamics and a Brief Development History of Islamic Finance in Select Emerging Islamic Economies

Major religions in the world have introduced an interest ban for different reasons. Those other than Islam have, however, made lenient changes to this ban over the centuries, ultimately completely eliminating it. As a result, the modern financial system has evolved onto the interest-based banking model which played a huge role in the development of the Western world. On the other hand, most Muslims have distanced themselves to this model for religious reasons in predominantly Muslim countries, leaving most financial sources idle. As a cure to this problem, an alternative model based on PLS principle has been offered, briefly called Islamic Finance (IF). A dual banking system has subsequently emerged with the involvement of both conventional and Islamic finance models in the system in some countries in the world.

A Quantitative Reassessment of the Dual Banking–Growth Nexus in Indonesia: Comparative Analysis

Economists who considered the growth performance in the past estimated that Indonesia would preserve its high growth rate performance in the long term. However, the national economy can be currently considered as a developing nation. In addition to public sources, domestic and foreign resources are also needed in the financing of high growth rate. Dual banking offers alternative financial capital opportunities for the developing Islamic countries. It could be argued that the IF serves as an alternative in Indonesia to finance investments. To better measure the probable impacts of the loans they offer upon the GDP, seemingly unrelated regression model has been utilized. A review of the both correlation matrix reveals that there is a strong positive relationship between the loans offered for the sectors and the GDP.

Politics vs. trade: a Realist view on Turkish‒Israeli economic relations

Abstract This article investigates the relationship between trade and politics, particularly the effect of improved or deteriorated political ties upon economic relations with particular reference to the bilateral trade and diplomatic relations between Turkey and Israel. The study attempts to identify under what conditions bilateral trade is affected by any significant change in political relations. It finds that economic relations were relatively bolstered at times of enhanced political relations whereas visible deterioration or decline was observed in the volume and state of trade relations at some critical points when diplomatic relations worsened. However, this does not refer to a constant and steady decline and is limited to some severe diplomatic crises experienced in bilateral relations. Some major premises of Realist and Liberal theories are employed to analyse the findings in this study. These findings are at least partially against the main arguments in the literature of the Liberal approach that trade determines politics. However, the course of trade relations between Israel and Turkey appears to be consistent with the tenets of the Realist theory which pays greater attention to security than it does to trade relations and argues that trade may not be relevant to improved bilateral political relations.

Reel Effective Exchange Rate Volatilities Impact on Tourism Sector in Turkey: An Empirical Analysis of 2003-2014☆

Abstract There have been positive changes in the macro indicators of the economy in Turkey over the last decade. The foreign trade volume increased remarkably whereas serious progress has also been observed in many sectors. The volatility in the Turkish currency was relatively reduced in the aftermath to the regulations in the finance sector. Tourism is one of the sectors in Turkey that is open to international markets and attracts foreign currency. The contribution and added value of the tourism sector to the national economy has been growing in recent years. The stability in the domestic currency also positively affected tourism sector. To this end, the revenues in this sector have also increased. This study analyses the dynamics of the macro performance in Turkish economy over the last decade and empirically reviews the developments in tourism sector as well as the reflections in the monetary policies and the real effective exchange rate (REER) volatility. Additionally, empirically tests the relationship between the tourism sector revenues and the REER in the period between 2002 and 2014.

Transitional Justice After the Civil War

The ongoing civil war in Syria witnessed a huge number of human rights violations and commission of heinous crimes including crimes against humanity, war crimes and other forms of violations. The opposition groups seem to be ambivalent on how to deal with these crimes after the end of civil war. Even though they argue that they will not go after revenge, they do not appear to favor transitional justice mechanisms including amnesty or truth commissions. However, they are also aware that it is not possible to prosecute everybody who committed crimes during the war. Lack of an agreement among the main figures of the opposition groups in this issue is visible. Yet they do not translate it into a source of dissension among them; instead, they express their goodwill to have an agreement that would satisfy all.