Thursday, April 15, 2010

Turkey: A Canadian View

See this thoughtful article about Turkey and its relationships with Israel, Europe, the U.S., and the Arab countries. It is found in Macleans.ca, the website of the Canadian counterpart of Time magazine.

The article's conclusions are not entirely optimistic, but largely so. My sense is that their view is more positive than the evidence can support. It does, however, ask some of the right questions:
What sort of country will Turkey become? Will it hold on to its republican identity with a strict separation between mosque and state? Or will the influence of political Islam grow and ultimately change what until now has been Turkey’s political foundation?