[jospehm20]

I think their is a good dose of idiocy mixed in with the fatalism to make them complete.

[jospehm20]

There not their.

[arthurus]

That total fatalism looks very like idiocy to a non fatalistic society. Among them, though is a small number of entrepreneurial types who would try to make better lives for their families but the traditions in Moslem Turkish and Arab societies is that if you make for yourself one whit more than your neighbors, the sultan or imam or emir swoops in and takes it and cuts off you head.
Mustafa Kemal, Ataturk, changed things in Turkey and a real and vibrant middle class arose. Then the Islamists effectively got power and slowly, methodically purged the Army and the Courts that had for 80 years guaranteed the secular Republic -ousting the Communists when they took power and the Islamists the first time they took power.