Turkey is a a crossroads. Theodore Couloumbis, Bill Ahlstrom and Gary Weaver, a post on RealClearPolitics take a look at a country that seems to be on the ascent:
Turkey is misunderstood by most people in Europe and the U.S. – not the least because Turks themselves comfortably call their country European, Eurasian, Balkan, Mediterranean and Near Eastern, and this very modern, actively commercial, long-time NATO member is also a leading voice in the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Its population is only 10 percent smaller than Germany’s; it ranks 15th in national wealth among the G-20; its citizens are more than 95 percent Muslim. After shrinking by nearly 5 percent in 2009, the Turkish economy will grow by nearly 7 percent in 2010 – one of the fastest rates of recovery from the worldwide recession.
Nearly two millennia at the crossroads of empires, religions, trade routes and regional conflicts, modern Turkey is once more at the crossroads. This was symbolized at the Oct. 29 Turkish Republic Day celebrations where the Turkish president and his head-scarf-wearing wife hosted one reception, and military leaders, “guardians of the secular state,” hosted another.
Go the link and read it in its entirety.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.