"Rooting for the Islamists
Western observers may fear political parties with Islamist roots, but Turkey’s is committed to legal reform, EU membership and economic growth.
July 24, 2007
Western observers tend to regard the political success of Islamists in the Middle East as bad news, because elections have brought to power such dangerous hard-liners as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Yet the strong victory of the main Islamist party in Sunday's election in Turkey -- the world's prime laboratory for an experiment in whether Islam is compatible with democracy -- was a very hopeful development."
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