One of the big news items of the week was the election of Abdullah Gul as Turkish president. It's the first time that an Islamic (rather than secular) leaning politician has headed up the country. The new First Lady wears a scarf, a no-no for secular Turks; it's far from a burqa. The one in the BBC piece is something that I could see Laura Bush wearing on the right occasion; a modern woman making a bow for Islamic modesty without looking like a Taliban throwback.
Gul's AK (Justice and Development in English) party is describe by the WaPo as "mildly Islamic." From what I've read of modern Turkish history, the AK's predecessor Welfare party was a bit more on the theocon side of things than the AK, which comes across as akin to the US Republicans if you substitute Christian for Muslim; no calls for sharia, but for more tolerance of Islam in the public square.
The AK's Wikipedia describes the change from the Welfare Party that the military (who sees itself as the guardian of secularism) booted from power in 1997 as altering "the traditional focus of religiously-affiliated politics from concern over Turkey’s lack of Islamic characteristics to pushing for democratic and economic reforms in addition to stressing moral values through the communitarian-liberal consensus." That has allowed the AK to oversee economic reforms that have boosted Turkish GDP in the 00's. Many swing voters went with their pocketbooks and went with the AK, similar to the libertarian-theocon coalition that makes the GOP tick.
Andy Jackson had this take on the election
Look for a “brain drain” effect in Turkey over the next few years.
I'm not sure that's going to happen. Plenty of US liberals she-dogged about moving overseas if Bush won, but the Canadian and British embassies weren't swamped with visa applications post-election. If Gul's AK folks keep the economic reforms coming, Turkey may become a more interesting place to be from an economic standpoint.
The secular military will keep the separation of mosque and state intact; they have a track record of stepping in if they think they're needed, most recently 10 years ago when they gave the Welfare party the heave-ho. If Turkey starts to become anything resembling a theocracy, the tanks will be on the street before the intelligentsia starts to go ex-pat on them.
It's cheap talk on the secular left about picking up and leaving if the Islamists take over. While there might be a few militant secularists that will bail, you may well see a reverse brain drain of smart Muslims going to Turkey where they can be free, modern and Muslim at the same time, something that is pick-two-of-three in the rest of the Islamic world.
What does that mean for Christians in Turkey and elsewhere? I think it might help on two levels. One, if hard-core Muslims have their political frustrations lowered, they might not be looking to Christian-bash quite as much.
Secondly, the AK party may show both nominally Muslim and Christian countries how you can have a modern and devout party. It may be too late for Dubya to spend much geopolitical capital, but Bush and the AK have quite a bit in common, leading free-market traditional-morality parties; yes, not free market enough, I hear the right end of the Peanut Gallery holler, but he beats the heck out of Barack or Hillary.
If Gul and the AK can make things work while keeping the generals content if not happy, that will be another American-style conservative party that can be an economic and geopolitical ally down the line. That's a promising prospect.
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