To some, the term communicates accomplishment in almost anything from financial planning to foreign policy, but “independence” is never a real possibility. It is Economics 101: Where there is division of labor there is interdependence, and in a globalized world, notwithstanding the sense of empowerment we get from continuous access to information, our actions are less independent than ever.

But when the boyish-looking businessman in his mid-forties spoke confidently of his independence from Turkey’s two major cities, I knew exactly what he meant. “We can deal directly with the world,” he said, “to export what I produce, I need no one to act as a go-between.” For the Anatolian Tigers, this is the gist of their success story. The rising industrialists of Turkey’s conservative heartland have taken pride in not relying on the stewardship of either the political authorities in Ankara or the business community in Istanbul, and Mustafa Boydak, the chairman of the Kayseri Chamber of Industrialists (KAYSO), is no exception.

It was five years ago and we were sitting at a lunch table on the well-manicured lawn outside the headquarters of Boydak Holding — an industrial group which grew from a modest carpenter’s workshop opened by two brothers in 1957 to a conglomerate of 38 companies that do business in eight sectors from furniture to aviation. Now they export to 110 countries and expect a turnover of $3.4 billion in 2013.

Mustafa Boydak, who is a member of Boydak Holding’s board, along with five other Boydaks of the second generation, had invited me and another colleague to eat and chat. We were interested in how the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) then five-year performance in power looked from the Boydaks’ hometown, Kayseri. (A major locomotive of growth in Anatolia with a population of 1 million, Kayseri sent one of its most famous sons, Abdullah Gül, to the Presidential Palace in 2007, and supported AKP with an overwhelming 64.9 percent vote in 2011.) Boydak, in turn, was keen on getting across the point that the best thing the government could do for them was not to cast a shadow. “Let us do commerce,” he said quoting a hadith by the Prophet Muhammad, “nine-tenths of one’s provisions are in commerce.”