The real only-democracy-in-the-middle-east:
TRUE FRIENDS
The Turkish Model
America's ally is poised to lead the Muslim world.
BY MELIK KAYLAN
Thursday, October 25, 2001 12:01 a.m. EDT
As American eyes scan eastward across a troubled Islamic horizon of equivocal friends and outright enemies, they should rest their gaze on Turkey, an unfaltering ally, and take heart. Turkey's decades-long fortitude in the service of Western interests and a Pax Americana has garnered meager applause from its allies--and a ton of trouble from its regional rivals. Yet it remains our most dependable resource in the Islamic world, and, as the world's most successful secular Muslim democracy, is set to play perhaps the most critical role of all our allies. We should dance a jig of gratitude for what Turkey has endured for our side up to now, because it points the way to what it could do for us henceforward.
The Turks have outfaced and outlasted all of the last century's devouring political upheavals. Consider how their neighbors--from the Balkans, the Soviet bloc, and in the Middle East--succumbed to the various temptations of fascism, communism, nonalignment, and Islamic fundamentalism, when Turkey did not. The country has not always presented a pretty face during its self-protective exertions, especially in the area of human rights. Encircled by the likes of Russia, Iran, Iraq and Syria, Turkey has perforce maintained a kind of "Bunker Democracy."
How else, one might ask, could Turkey have stayed the course while permitting the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to station anti-Soviet ICBMs within its borders, making it a prime nuclear first-strike target, and letting the U.S. use its airbases against Iraq, once a valuable trading partner? The same grim self-discipline kept the Turks from recent foreign adventures in defense of their ethnic cousins who were enduring slaughter in Bosnia, Azerbaijan and Chechnya.
But now it's time for the Turks, with Western support and encouragement, to come out of their bunker and exert themselves in shaping history outside their borders. That they were among the first allies to volunteer unconditional support for the U.S., offering everything from bases to soldiers, shows that they are willing. Their record shows that they are able. What remains is for the West to help Turkey mobilize its potential.
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