July 30th, 2008 by Adam

Writing in the Daily Star, Fadi Hakura sees the current crisis in Turkey surrounding the AKP as representing a groundbreaking ideological shift in Turkey’s political system. He sees the emergence of a secularized Islam and the electorate’s desire for a focus on economic issues rather than narrow religious ones as evidence of the formation of a new political order. Hakura’s best evidence of this political change and the shift away from the nation’s past ideological battles is the military’s silence. Their inaction is due to the fact that, “…Turkey is fast becoming a diverse society, as opposed to a once-monolithic bloc of secularists and Islamists, the military is adapting to altering political, economic and societal conditions.”

However, an editorial in Financial Times sees the Turkish crisis as dire and a setback to the progress the country has made. The editorial says, “To argue the country can muddle through a deposition of its government because the army has closed four Islamist parties in the past misunderstands the scale of the crisis. The battle between secularists and conservatives has reached a critical point.”

Posted in Political Islam, Reform, Secularism, Turkey |