Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Crisis in Turkey

Not much...OK nothing, is being said about what is happening in Turkey right now, but the implications for the Middle Eastern world are significant.  Turkey has long been a bastion of secularism in the Islamic world and if you accept the prognostication of George Friedman's book, "The Next 100 Years," it stands to figure large in the geopolitics of this century.  The country over the last several election cycles has been drifting away from the secular roots laid down by Mustafa Ataturk in the 1920's and headed down the dark hallway of theocracy from which little good emerges.  Last week, the government, now headed by the Islamic AKP, arrested 67 officers including the former heads of the Air Force and Navy.  Considering it has been the military that has prevented the country from sliding into theocratic hell several times before, this is particularly ominous.  Read more about this disturbing piece of news here.

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