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Prime Minister Erdogan
pictured here with his wife. |
I heard an interesting theory last night at dinner and it may have some legs. While folks in western Turkey are very concerned about Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan’s gradual movement towards conservative Islam (they are worried it's slowly turning into another Iran), he may have other motives. With the idea of letting Turkey into the EU on the wane perhaps Erdogan is doing what every other leader does who wants to get the attention of the US: flirt with the bogeyman of the “East”. Seems like a win-win-win for him in that he collects the votes of the country’s faithful, does a land office trade with the pariahs of the world like Iran and Syria, and meanwhile gains leverage with the US who will push like heck to have them join the EU to help counter the growing outreach of radical Islam. Notice the difference between becoming more religiously conservative, which is where Turkey seems to be headed for the moment, and radical Islam which is what produces terrorists.
Sounds like a pretty interesting plan if you ask me. Of course just to be clear no one has asked me and these are purely my own ramblings. And BTW, if Turkey joins the EU, who’s next? Lebanon? Israel? Iraq?
OK, just back from Istanbul where I tried out this theory on a member of one of the big industrial families and he would have none of it. According to him, Erdogan's push really is about conservative Islamic ideology and his "guru" is a cleric who narrowly escaped Turkish prison and is now in Philadelphia of all places. Supposedly Bush dumped heaps of money on Erdogan's election campaign in 2002 because the US felt it needed a democratically elected Islamic government to show the rest of the Middle East. Whew, could that really be true? Furthermore, he claims much of Turkey's economic growth is artificial and is a direct result of $18 billion of nearly free money from the IMF, coincidentally at the beginning of 2003.
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