In an op-ed for the Christian Science Monitor on July 24, 2008, POMED’s Shadi Hamid and Alex Taurel analyze the regional implications of a threat by the Turkish Constitutional Court to close down the AKP and ban its leading figures.
President Bush’s vision of a democratic Middle East was premised in part on the region’s popular Islamist groups reconciling themselves to the give-and-take nature of democracy. It might make sense then, that the Bush administration would do what it could to support a party that has made such a transformation in Turkey. But it’s not.
Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), which fashioned itself as the Muslim equivalent of Europe’s Christian Democrats, has stood out by passing a series of unprecedented political reforms as the country’s ruling party.
Yet the Turkish Constitutional Court – bastion of the hard-line secularist old guard – is now threatening to close down the AKP and ban its leading figures, including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan andPresident Abdullah Gul, from party politics for five years. And the Bush administration, in the face of this impending judicial coup, has chosen to remain indifferent. The consequences could reach beyond a setback to democracy in Turkey and affect the Middle East.
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Turkey's dangerous message to the Muslim world
Shadi Hamid
Alex Taurel
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In an op-ed for the Christian Science Monitor on July 24, 2008, POMED’s Shadi Hamid and Alex Taurel analyze the regional implications of a threat by the Turkish Constitutional Court to close down the AKP and ban its leading figures.
President Bush’s vision of a democratic Middle East was premised in part on the region’s popular Islamist groups reconciling themselves to the give-and-take nature of democracy. It might make sense then, that the Bush administration would do what it could to support a party that has made such a transformation in Turkey. But it’s not.
Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), which fashioned itself as the Muslim equivalent of Europe’s Christian Democrats, has stood out by passing a series of unprecedented political reforms as the country’s ruling party.
Yet the Turkish Constitutional Court – bastion of the hard-line secularist old guard – is now threatening to close down the AKP and ban its leading figures, including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan andPresident Abdullah Gul, from party politics for five years. And the Bush administration, in the face of this impending judicial coup, has chosen to remain indifferent. The consequences could reach beyond a setback to democracy in Turkey and affect the Middle East.
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