TURKEY AT THE FORK IN THE ROAD: WILL IT TURN TO MORE ISLAMICISM OR RETURN TO SECULARISM?

ESSENTIAL READING.

EXCERPT:

In 2002, Erdoğan’s Justice and Development party (Adalet ve Kakınma Partisi, AKP) won a plurality in parliamentary elections and, because of a fluke in Turkish election law, was able to amplify one-third of the popular vote into a two-thirds parliamentary majority. Erdoğan used this advantage to enact reforms which had the net affect of stacking not only the civil service, but also banking boards and the judiciary with his political supporters and religious fundamentalists. Erdoğan’s judges wasted no time. They placed liens against political opponents’ property, seized independent newspapers and television station including, not by coincidence ATV, and assigned sympathetic judges to hear appeals against earlier decisions levied against Islamists.

THE LEFT THINKS THIS IS BENIGN. BUT THEY WERE WRONG BEFORE:

In November 1978, Steven Erlanger, the future New York Times foreign correspondent, penned a New Republic essay arguing that Khomeini’s vision for Iran was essentially a “Platonic Republic with a grand ayatollah as a philosopher-king,” and predicting the triumph of an independent liberal left worried more about labor conditions in Iran’s oil fields than pursuing any theological tendency

• THE TURKISH SUPREME COURT WILL RULE SOON ON WHETHER TO OUTLAW THE RULING PARTY - THE AKP.

• (THIS HAS HAPPENED BEFORE; ERDOGAN WAS "IMPEACHED" AND HIS PARTY BANNED BEFORE - FOR THE VERY SAME CRIME.)

• IF THEY DON'T BAN THE AKP, THEN TURKEY WILL CONTINUE DOWN THE ROAD TO SHARIA.