"Turkey in transition: reality and image
Written by Gunes Murat Tezcur
The very clash of interests dividing Turkey may be the route to its democratic deepening, says Günes Murat Tezcür.
The visit of Barack Obama to Turkey on 6-7 April 2009 at the end of his week-long European tour - the United States president's first to a Muslim-majority country - is just one of many current signals of the considerable global interest in Turkish domestic politics and foreign-policy choices. Indeed, Turkey is often regarded by many as one or other kind of 'model': on account of the way this Muslim-majority nation conducts its democratic governance, maintains its secular regime, manages its prospects for membership in the European Union, pursues its mediating role in the middle-east and Caucasus conflicts, and (most ambitiously) represents a standing rebuke to the 'clash of civilisations' paradigm."
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