ABSTRACT
Turkish culture has several distinctive characteristics relative to the other domains about which much of the research on CCI has been carried out. First, in contrast to Anglo-Saxon countries and much of Europe, it is a secular country with 99 per cent of its population being Muslim (Turan, 1991). Regarding this, earlier research has highlighted that religion is significantly correlated with attitudes towards aspects of corporate social responsibility (CSR) (Brammer et al., 2007). In particular, these authors highlighted that ‘Muslims are supportive of holding companies responsible for addressing poverty and charity, which
are basic tenets of Islam but do not in general expect companies to uphold equal rights between genders’ (p.240). Despite the fact that the vast majority of the population is Muslim, other religious and ethnic groups, particularly in Istanbul, have an influence on society and business that outweighs their percentage representation (Tapper, 1991; Timmerman, 1995; Turan 1991), thus providing a rich diversity of culture.
