The goal of this paper is to explore new middle class subjectivities and strategies that have emerged in contemporary Turkey as part of the neoliberal restructuring of the Turkish economy. Drawing on in-depth interviews with highly skilled professionals who work in transnational corporations in Istanbul, this paper investigates the political implications of meaning-making among the new middle classes as they talk about their careers. Turkey has experienced significant social class transformations since it was integrated into the global market with the neoliberal reforms of 1980s. The neoliberalization of the economy has meant, along with other things, increasing income inequality, the weakening of salaried and laboring classes, new consumption patterns and the rise of a professional class who works in finance and service jobs in multinational corporations. Educated and young, these new middle classes are integrated into global networks of business and consumption through their professional lives as well as their daily practices. This paper focuses on the meanings they attach to their careers and the transnational nature of the companies where they work. On the one hand, this career is seen as a guarantee of social mobility and class distinction from lower classes in the urban landscape. Enabled by their economic capital, these actors separate out their urban experience from lower classes in Istanbul. On the other hand, they see their work as a status symbol in and of itself. Working at a transnational corporation assumes a symbolic significance because of the specific connotations of being associated with ‘West’ in Turkey. In a context where global mobility and access to transnational social and cultural capitals are markers of distinction, working in transnational companies becomes a strategy to secure and solidify a “modern” global middle class status as well as a testament to it. Ironically, narratives of these particular career paths serve to simultaneously produce discourses of cosmopolitan identities and to enable global and local stratifications, which severe ties with other classes. This has significant ramifications for possibilities of political mobilization in contemporary Turkey.