Samuel Huntington was a fraud. The best thing he did for humanity was in 2008. There are countless frauds like huntington who peddle this clash of civilisations nonsense. They make money playing off of the fears of insecure and semi-educated people. This fear of Islam is misplaced. That does not mean that political Islam or fundamentalist Islam should not be challenged or tolerated. A liberal society should allow freedom of belief. But that stops when one person's beliefs are harmfully imposed upon another person.

I strongly disagree that the concerns of the cosmopolitan secular West-Turks about their religious provincial neighbours are misplaced at all.
The eastern-most anatolian and Kurdish provinces ARE very much like Saudi Arabia indeed- and reported quite frequently for honor killings and family feuds, have a similar amount of extreme backward bigoted mindset as the remote areas of the US 'bible belt', and to top it off, as a majority, are the main reason the deeply religious, anti-secular and very Middle-east-leaning, EU-alienating AKP keeps getting re-elected, and its PM Erdogan continues to woo the extremist world with his rather unpleasant rants and speeches.

It's not hard to see why the secularists aren't happy about them.

I really feel sorry for the Secular Turkish people- they really deserved to be in a better more independent situation than stuck to such neighbours. They may well have seamlessly joined the European community long ago- possibly its most glamorous and esteemed member? And likely been a much richer nation had Ataturk left the East-Anatolian provinces to fend for themselves and just kept the provinces in the West and North in the Republic.

Of course, recent stereotypes of all Muslims in general have also put prejudice against them by people in the EU (like majority-secular Bosnia, Kosova and Albania ALSO confused uniformly as dress-wearing God-botherers by Westerners).

Sadly unless the east undergoes a miracle and starts modernizing, I don't see any way out for the West for a VERY long time. Ironically, if the army launched a coup and tried to separate, the USA would likely help the Islamists fight them back!

<<With a quick revolution Ataturk, the founder of this new Republic, replaced all the religious institutions with modern and very secular ones.>>

Ataturk did not go far enough. He shoould have eliminated all -- the whole system of mosques, madrrasahs imams, mullah; send them to paradise in one stroke.

Now it is too late. Erdogan the Islamist will kill the secularist and eliminate all non-Muslims.

<< ...today it [AK Party] has similarities with the Republican Party in the US or the Liberal Party in Australia...>>

A blatant lie by Alice Aslan, the Islamists apologoist.

There is no puzzle, the AK Party is going to implement shariah law in Turkey. The Turish generals should completely wipe out the AK Party and invite the Europeans to run Turkey temporarily before setting up a truly secular democracy, not an Islamic Republic.

Interesting article. We don't know enough about Turkey, and I suspect neither do Western Europeans.

I visited Istanbul (but not the rest of Turkey) three years ago and liked the city and the people. Turkey doesn't frighten me like the Middle East, which I will not visit. Turks in Australia have never presented visible problems as migrants. That's because Turkey has been through many decades of secularism with separation of religion from state. The practical reality may not be as liberal outside Istanbul. Turks have perpetrated "honour killings" in Europe and that is appalling, disgraceful and intolerable.

I have a keen sense of history. 1529: the Ottoman siege of Vienna; 1571: the Battle of Lepanto; 1683: the Battle of Vienna, when Western Europe was saved by Polish king Jan Sobieski. Centuries of war between Russia and Turkey reflect a religious clash and Orthodox angst over the loss of Constantinople. Turkey's "gift" of Islam to parts of its European empire brought a clash of civilizations continuing today.

Unlike Lucy Montgomery,I believe Samuel Huntington's thesis is incontrovertible. Unpalatable to the politically correct, but true.

I will visit Turkey again - though not any other countries in the Middle East. However I certainly don't see Turkey's place as within the EU. The rise of Islamic cultural as well as religious consciousness in Turkey is fundamentally incompatible with European civilization.

Islamic theology is totalitarian, except for the Sufi strand which is widely persecuted. It is a permanent, implacable enemy of the core values of the West. If Turkey has been "better" than the rest of the Islamic world, and likewise Indonesia to a lesser extent, that's because in both, Islam has been diliuted by Western ideas of secularism, toleration and civil liberties. (Kurds and Armenian sympathizers miss out.)

Turkey may be the best face of Islam, but it isn't Europe and never will be. The Europeans would have to have a death wish to allow unrestricted immigration of potentially millions more Muslims. God save Europe from that.

Philip Tang, you are an idiot.

Alice, there is one problem you have ignored, or just forgotten.

Turkey continues to threaten Greece and Cyprus. And the most threatening people within Turkey are the Secularists!!

Your reason for writing this article is surely derived from the recent scandal involving the military and its attempt to de-throne Erdogan's party. And who was going to be the patsy for this coup? GREECE!

But I suppose Greece does not matter at the moment, aye?

Savvas Tzionis,

The Greeks were beaten soundly by the Turks led by Ataturk in a just war (1921,1922) and they took back occupied territories.

As you know, Ataturk was responsible for the abolition of the Turkish caliphate. The cultural reforms put in place were met with fierce opposition.

The Islamists elements were not happy and they launched attacks on the Kemalist (secularists) reformists

Turkey was the only Islamic country that made a conscious effort to remove Islamism. They did not go far enough to wipe out Islamism completely.

Today, Erdogan is bringing back the caliphate to Turkey, the AK Party is trying to undo what Ataturk had done.

Tzionis being an Islamists sympathiser I understand why you support the AK Party.

The author's book says "Islamophobia is a contemporary form of racism against Muslims" FAIL.

This is like saying being anti-facist was being against Germans/Spaniards/Italians and anti-communists racially differentiated Russians - a empire of many different peoples and cultures.

Sorry, not supporting Islamic extremists, and treasuring Western liberal democracy is about rule of law, and cultural values that embrace a universalist approach to humanity.

Islam does not allow religious freedom or tolerance. That is to be opposed irrespective if the culprits are from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Nigeria or Malaysia, or if they are white, black or in between.

Race is not related to religion. Culture is not restricted to race. Please start again...