shropshire 0 #1 July 23, 2007 The election in Turkey has been won by the Moderate Islamic AK Party. How will this impact the geo-political map and issues in the region? Should an apparently religion based party (even a moderate one) take power in any country? (Even though it appears to be O.K in the West, with Christian Democratic parties ...... and Presidents the listen to 'God')? (.)Y(.) Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Skyrad 0 #2 July 23, 2007 The AK party is also pro west pro Europe and pro democracy. I don't think there will be any problem, the Turkish people are genrally Muslim but are not Islamists.When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy. Lucius Annaeus Seneca Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
shropshire 0 #3 July 23, 2007 Cheers J - that was my understanding too, based upon the BBC news. (.)Y(.) Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
riddler 0 #4 July 25, 2007 Quote The AK party is also pro west pro Europe and pro democracy. I can't pretend to understand all the issues in Turkey, the religion there, or the politics, but I work with Turkish I.T. people in the main city of Istanbul and have frequent discussions with them about the situation. The inside take from them is that the AKP party is pro-fundamentalist, and their intention is to remove secularity from the government (in other words, they want to bring back religion into the government). To understand the background, you have to go back to the beginning of modern Turkey at the beginning of the 20th century. A man, whom the turks call the Ataturk (meaning "father of the Turks") came to power and introduced sweeping changes to what was previously an empire. Among other things, the Ataturk introduced democracy, educational reforms, scientific learning, women's rights and a separation of church and state (secularism). He is considered a hero to many modern Turks. The relatively new AKP government represents a return to fundamentalist Muslim, and potentially pro-Islamic beliefs, and modern Turks feel that the AKP intends to erode the ideals of the Ataturk and eventually return Islamic restrictions to the people of Turkey. Their message to the western media has been carefully crafted to state that they support secularity (when in fact, many turks do not believe so, and have held a few large demonstrations to that effect that haven't really been shown in the western media), to say that they want a "blend" of Islamic and democratic society (again, many people there don't buy it), to say that they support women's rights (needless to say some of the educated women that I work with are very concerned). The current US government supports the now-ruling AKP party, despite these differences. The feeling of my co-workers in Turkey is that the US supports the AKP party because they have allowed US air bases to continue flights in and out of Iraq. Although Turkey doesn't support US ground troops into Iraq, the feeling is that the US government wants to maintain the status quo there by supporting the government, regardless of it's current political climate. The elections there are different than here - it's not a case of people lining up and everyone casting a vote, as we do in the US. The elections involve the senior representatives of the government (a unicameral national assembly) casting votes to the exclusion of the people. Now that the AKP party has taken a majority seat in the elections, many Turkish people feel that their way of life will begin to change for the worse, and they feel that the government may soon begin to openly support Islamic fundamentalists. For more information, check out this article at the Washington Post.Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
