"Seven Years of AKP Rule
By Soner Cagaptay
Majalla.com, November 26, 2009
The Anatolian landscape is dotted by a tall slender tree in the aspen family, known to the Turks as kavak. This is a fragile-looking but sturdy tree, so when the harsh Anatolian wind blows across the steppe, kavak can bend at incredible angles, adjusting to the power of the wind, and somehow not break. Turkey is like the Anatolian kavak. The country has come to bend with the powerful political, social and foreign policy choices that its elites have ushered in over the ages, bowing to the power of the Anatolian winds. Ever since the sultans started to Westernize the Ottoman Empire in the 1770's, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk continued these reforms making Turkey a secular republic in the 1920's, and the various political parties of the Turkish democracy in the twentieth century cast their dice with the West, the Turks have adopted a pro-Western stance in foreign policy, embraced secular democracy at home, and marched towards the European Union (EU)."
More:Article or Op-Ed
