"Worries about Turkey are ‘fact-free paranoia’
BY FAREED ZAKARIA
10 May 2007
OVER the past five years, President Bush has made various efforts to reform the Arab world. They have all stumbled over one enormous obstacle. In the region, the people who win elections are not democrats.
They seem to believe in elections (at least as long as they win), but not in the individual rights, laws and traditions that create a genuine liberal democracy. The administration has pushed for elections in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and Egypt, only to find that religious fundamentalists have triumphed in most of them. Except in Turkey. In Turkey the popular ruling party, the AK — despite some background with political Islam — has proved to be the most open, modern and liberal political movement in Turkey’s history. That extraordinary achievement may now be in peril because of the overreaction of Turkey’s secular (and unelected) establishment."
More:Khaleej Times Online - Worries about Turkey are ‘fact-free paranoia’
