The rest of Europe may still think of Turkey as a poor relation, a less-than-welcome applicant for European Union membership and a supplicant of international aid. But the Turk as a nation is no longer a beggar, rather something of a financial model to the rest of Europe, slashing government costs, forbidding high-risk loans, even exporting capital.

While the West struggles to emerge from economic mire, Turkey’s leaders brim with confidence. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan showed supreme political self-assurance when he ordered the February arrest of nearly 50 army officers, alleging a coup plot in a country in which four governments have been overthrown since 1960. Economic ministers in Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) are showing strength in other ways.

Ali Babacan, the deputy prime minister who has captained Turkey’s economic makeover since the AKP came to power in 2002, took a schoolmasterish tone...