Should Turkey Ignore Europe’s Advice On Democracy?

Should turkey ignore Europe’s advice on Democracy?

Michael van der Galien, writing in the Turkish Daily News, raises the issue in an op-ed piece. Here’s part of it:

The moment Turkish secularists started raising their collective voice against the plans of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), the European Union and individual European countries followed the suit. They immediately starting railing against these secularists, saying they were anti-Democratic forces who should accept the wishes of the majority.

Although this reaction was understandable from a Western perspective, Turks should not be influenced by it.West-Europeans love to talk about Turkey, and we love to tell Turkey what to do.

That even though the far majority of West-Europeans have never visited Turkey, let alone talked to members of Turkey’s opposition. Not only that, when some European politicians have visited Turkey, they often project their own principles and the history of their own country on this young republic. By doing so, they often choose to support forces within Turkey that are not focused on the future, but on the past. Forces that do not want to turn Turkey into a modern, secular state, but that want to turn this beautiful country into an Islamic state.

Read it in its entirety.

There’s some spirited blog discussion on this article here. And also here.