idea# 6 basket of turkish banks

My dad read a book saying Turkey will be a fast growing country in the next century.  I looked at the ishare and the biggest bank is called Akbank.  Prevailing wisdom is that when looking at emerging markets, start with the banks, since they have immature bond markets the banks often are the bond holders and profit the most from growth.  

Akbank has a very pretty CEO.  She appears to be a descendant from the original owner.  Her family owns 40% and foreign investors own quite a bit.   I don't like it so far and I'm about to stop looking.  This is so far out of my circle of competence that I should be ashamed at myself for even thinking about it.  Family in the biz is not my thing, either.

I'm not going to stop looking.  I found a research report by Merrill comparing Turkish banks.  It lists 8 banks.  3 are rated buys.  I still like the idea of buying a bank in an emerging market since they make a ton of money originating deals, they make money holding money, they make money all the different ways.

Maybe there is some value in turkish banks.  The average turkish bank trades at a 9x multiple of earnings for 2009 whereas all the other emerging market banks in this report traded in the 10-20x range.  Maybe owning 3 banks would be ok.   I don't see any catalysts for when they might get more expensive, or explanations for their cheapness.