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Barry Habib: A Guide to Mortgage Markets and a Producer of Broadway Shows

Barry with his wife Toni.

Barry is the youngest of five children of an immigrant family from Ortakoy, İstanbul. When the family decided to move away in 1958, like any immigrant who desired to come to the U.S., they thought that money lay scattered on the streets and all they had to do was just bend down and picked it up.

October 9, 2009
Published in Businessman

A Long Journey from Edirne to the U.S.: The Mitrani Family Adventure

Norman Belmonte is front of the picture of Edirne Synagogue which his parents got married in 1913.

After 1492 many exiles from Spain came to Edirne (Adrianople), a town in Turkey located in eastern Thrace near the Turkish-Greek-Bulgarian frontier, followed by refugees from Portugal, and Italy as well.
These new immigrants, who had different customs from the Romaniots, established their own congregations (kahal, pl. kehalim) according to their place of origin. In 1656 there were 15 different kehalim, most of them named after locations in Spain, Portugal, and Italy.

October 6, 2009
Published in Businessman

A Blessing in Disguise

Bridgeport, CT - “A blessing in disguise,” is the best phrase to describe Hakki Akbulak’s business adventures in the U.S. Akbulak, a Turkish born businessman, left Turkey when he was 17 to attend a college in Germany, become a CPA, then started to work for KMPG, a global network of professional services firms providing audit, tax and advisory services.

June 14, 2009
Published in Businessman

The Brothers' Passion

Hakki and Erdogan Akbulak, brothers born in Ankara, established AKDO/SILKAR after Erdogan was diagnosed with cancer in 1990. He came to the United States for treatment, and it was at this critical time that Hakki realized how important it was to spend as much time with his brother as possible.