Unnoticed

Submitted by Alan Fox (United States), Mar 2, 2010 at 15:59

I am so grateful to you Dr. Pipes for calling attention to recent events in Turkey. The slow slide of this Western-oriented Muslim country (putatively, the only major one) should give everyone pause. This is a result not only of its own internal dialectic but also the clear reluctance of the EU to accept Turkey as potential or future member. The message received by Turkey and its military was, "you will never be Western enough to be accepted into the EU." For its entire history, Turkey's military has been guarantor against Islamization of the Turkish state and secularism as the state's central organizing principle is about to be cast off. The military may have finally under-played its hand, but only because the EU unwittingly erased one of its major arguments, that is, it is better for Turkey to be a Western nation than an Islamic nation.

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