When the executives at Amstar Advisers talk Turkey, they are not speaking euphemistically.

The investment manager recently opened its fifth and largest shopping center in one of the most exotic of the euro zone countries, and the former epicenter of the vast Ottoman Empire. Today, Turkey is a largely modern nation that proudly wears its status as one of the world’s fast-growth economies like a breastplate.

Amstar plans to build more retail centers in Turkey, as well as some urban housing projects in Istanbul, the nation’s largest city. (More on that later.)

“We are confident in Turkey’s long-term fundamentals,” says Jason Lucas, president of Amstar, which started investing in the country in 2007. “We purposely leapfrogged western and central Europe and were drawn to Turkey for a number of reasons.”

Those reasons include Turkey’s size and youth, with 75 milli