"Muslim Democracy in Action
[at a more abstract level the use of 'Muslim' is problematic and i would agree with the current president Mr. Sezer in that sense. Turkey wants to be known as a secular republic. She has no official religion. However, abstraction does not work all the time. Actual Turkish politics lead to such a labeling. But if maybe secularists did not over-problematize AKP's standing, this would not an issue of discussion...]
Muslim Democracy in Action
The notion that democracy and Islam are fundamentally incompatible is about to get a resounding rebuke, just at the moment it is threatening to congeal as conventional wisdom in Washington.
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fter all, Erdogan's government has been one of the most liberal and modernizing regimes in recent Turkish history. Under Gul's leadership, it pressed for membership talks with the European Union and in the name of winning them enacted a series of legal and human rights reforms. Minority Kurds and women won greater rights; the death penalty was abolished. The economy was liberalized and foreign investment welcomed, touching off a boom that has turned Turkey from a basket case in the International Monetary Fund's emergency ward to an emerging tiger with annual growth rates over 7 percent.
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The hardening conventional wisdom is that Islamists use democracy only to gain power so as to impose their totalitarian ideology -- that any election they win will be the last one. Yet in the byzantine five-month power struggle that has preceded tomorrow's election, the sides in Turkey have been reversed. The Islamists have stood not only for democracy but also for compromise and moderation. The threat to Turkey's political stability has come from the professed secularists, who have employed street demonstrations and twisted court rulings and pulled off what has come to be known as the world's first Internet coup.
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Gul's election by parliament now looks like a victory for democracy as well as for the principle that a Muslim political party can be moderate and liberal. You'd think the Bush administration would be ecstatic. Instead, it has looked curiously conflicted since the crisis began. The State Department and White House mostly kept quiet during the events of April, even while European governments publicly urged the military to respect the democratic system. Even after Erdogan's landslide, U.S. officials were endorsing "consensus" on the presidential election -- that is, a candidate other than Gul.
Gul didn't back down, which means that Turkey will have a president who is more friendly to the United States than the vast majority of "secular" Turkish politicians -- or Turks. Shouldn't he be welcomed?
Creative foreign policy in the Gül era
Turkey is in a very difficult sociopolitical area, full of challenges and opportunities. It is obvious that isolationism is not an option for Turkey, which needs a proactive and dynamic foreign policy....Hanioğlu: No risk of Iranian-style regime in Turkey
M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, the chair of the Near Eastern Studies Department at Princeton University, says the Turkish establishment perceives open intellectual discussion of the principles of the regime, such as secularism and democracy, as overt attacks on these tenets themselves, but societies should be able to discuss such concepts in tandem with societal and global changes.
Grigorie: Turkey is more than just a unique country; it is a continent
Ambassador Constantin Mihail Grigorie is only one of many Romanians who entered Turkey to contribute to the relations between two countries, others are Dimitrie Cantemir -- a musician who contributed to classical Turkish music -- and soccer players like Gheorghe Hagi and Mircea Lucescu, who according to Ambassador Grigorie were the real ambassadors to Turkey....
Recalling President Sezer’s election and performance
President Sezer is leaving office tomorrow and his election will be remembered as one of the greatest deceptions in Turkish history.
And Sezer leaves...
Turkey’s 10th president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, is readying to leave office as the new president will be elected in the third round of voting tomorrow.
Biggest danger awaiting AK Party
It is a fact that should always be in the minds of AK Party officials that social support for this party and the “opposition party in power” image are going head to head.
