The question remains for me, is how many of the AKP’s supporters (identifying themselves as Muslims first, Turks second) living outside the more secular city enclaves will get to the polls, they alone comprise the majority of the Turkish state and can crush the secularists with the weight of their vote.
Analysis: Turkey as a model of Muslim democracy is in shambles
by Ariel Ben Solomon
Jerusalem Post
March 24, 2014
A big loss for Erdogan’s AK Party in upcoming local elections next Sunday could lay the way for a course correction from the opposition.
Anti-Erdogan protesters in Turkey Photo: REUTERS/Umit Bektas
The idea that Turkey is a model Islamic democracy that “Arab Spring” countries could emulate is in shambles.
The ban that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government placed on Twitter to block recent anti-government postings was extended to Google on Saturday, as the search engine was used as a way to get around the Twitter ban, Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily News reported.
“When [US] President Barack Obama portrayed prospering Turkey, ruled by sweet Islamists, as ‘a great Islamic democracy’ in 2010, he was probably hoping that this strange democracy that comes with a religious prefix would serve a useful purpose: a glittering role model for the Arab countries that lagged behind even an Islamic democracy. Mr. Obama’s ‘mission: impossible’ has failed – probably for good,” Burak Bekdil, a columnist for Hurriyet wrote in an article published Friday.
A big loss for Erdogan’s AK Party in upcoming local elections next Sunday could lay the way for a course correction from the opposition.
However, Erdogan still enjoys wide popularity and has not been shy in wielding government power to support his political goals and hold on to power.
“Turkey has been coasting on its reputation for years, but even former US ambassadors to Turkey who traditionally have been apologists for the AKP have woken up to the reality of what Turkey has become,” Michael Rubin, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official, told The Jerusalem Post.
Rubin, author of the new book Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes, said that “once, analysts debated whether Turkey should join the European Union; however, increasingly the debate is about how long Turkey can avoid being labeled a state-sponsor of terrorism.”
