Among other matters the US government and public are both largely ignoring, with Iraq on the brain, is Turkey. While American leaders wring their hands over the prospects of building democracy in Iraq, democracy in Turkey is navigating through treacherous waters. A political stand-off between the governing Justice and Development Party (the Turkish initials are AKP) and the opposition has turned into a constitutional crisis.
After the opposition succeeded, through a bit of legal legerdemain, in blocking the parliamentary election of Abdullah Gul, the AKP's candidate, to be the next president, many Turkish politicians are now demanding constitutional reform. Since the disgruntled AKP is an Islamic party, many Turks are worried about what sort of constitutional changes the AKP may have in mind. Not surprisingly, the Turkish army, the traditional guarantor of secular government, has started threatening that it might have to resolve the issue, er, forcefully. From the Le Monde article on this political crisis:
The constitutional court had seemed to be consulting the political
weather vane as closely as its law books. The Friday before its
decision, the military had taken the nation by surprise by posting on
its website what amounted to an ultimatum to the government to abandon
a presidential election which it said risked compromising the secular
character of the republic. The Turkish chief of staff, General Yasar
Buyukanit, had already hinted at what was to come in a rare press
conference in Ankara on 13 April when he said that that he hoped the
next president would not simply pay lip service to Turkey’s secular
constitution but respect it to its core.
As the political temperature in Turkey rises, basic liberties, such as freedom of expression, begin to wilt. Intolerance is hardly the monopoly of any faction. Most visibly, nationalists lobbied for the prosecution of Orhan Pamuk and Elif Shafak for writing books that somehow insulted the nation of Turkey. (Pamuk, by the way, won the 2006 Nobel Prize for literature.)
Meanwhile, Turkey faces other serious challenges. Turks want to be part of the European Union, but many Europeans remain skeptical. (The worse Turkey's internal problems get, the higher the skepticism goes.) Many Turks are themselves skeptical about joining Europe. Turkey sits on the northern border of Iraq, where it feels some of the backlash from that conflict, particularly around all things Kurdish. The Turkish economy is emerging from a troubled period of low GNP, a weak currency, and inflationary scares.
Turkey may not provide a repeatable model for every predominantly Islamic society, but the Turks did successfully build and maintain a secular, constitutional, and democratic government. Turkey is also struggling in areas where the United States might directly help. For example, US officials can help round up more economic support in general, and political support within Europe. American civilian and military leaders can act as honest brokers between their Turkish counterparts and the Kurds, when either the Turks or Kurds feel nervous about each other's intentions. The US might take a stronger public position on the legal harassment of Turkish writers. Instead, Turkey is lost down the memory hole, where everything not directly related to Iraq or Iran have disappeared.
