I am facinated by Turkey, as a nation. I don't know how it works, but it works. The idea of a secular nation, comprised by muslims, which has a democracy and yet the army safeguards it's secularity from the people is alien to me. I don't know how they make it work. If I didn't seen it in action, I would say that these two opposing forces would tear a antion apart.
IMO while Turkey benefits from increased freedoms the threat of Islamist Radicalism is still present. Erdogan might seem a democracy lover from outside but all I see is a populist government who uses religion and subsidizes to gather support from the uneducated masses. What he says and what his government really does is different, local cadres of AKP is full of bigots who are closed to any form of progress. For an example just recently the governor of Ordu tried to remove the urinals from the public toilets because he deemed them against Islamic rules. Such behaviour while seems unimportant is becoming common place in Turkey.
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