Thomas Friedman is a NY Times journalist. Here are four questions Turks asked him:

One: Do you think we are seeing the death of the West and the rise of new world powers in the East?

Two: Tom, it was great talking to you this morning, but would you mind not quoting me by name? I’m afraid the government will retaliate against me, my newspaper or my business if you do.

Three: Is it true, as Prime Minister Erdogan believes, that Israel is behind the attacks by the Kurdish terrorist group P.K.K. on Turkey?

Four: Do you really think Obama can punish Turkey for voting against the U.S. at the U.N. on Iran sanctions? After all, America needs Turkey more than Turkey needs America.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/opinion/20friedman.html?src=me&ref=homepage

SOME QUOTES:

"The Turks wanted to get into the European Union and were rebuffed, but I’m not sure Turkish businessmen even care today. The E.U. feels dead next to Turkey, which last year was right behind India and China among the fastest-growing economies in the world — just under 7 percent — and was the fastest-growing economy in Europe.

[..]

In 1980, Turkey’s total exports were worth $3 billion. In 2008, they were $132 billion

[..]

I’ve never visited a democracy where more people whom I interviewed asked me not to quote them by name for fear of retribution by [Prime Minister] Erdogan’s circle — in the form of lawsuits, tax investigations or being shut out of government contracts. The media here is rampantly self-censored.

[..]

The secular and moderate Muslim forces in Turkey are alarmed; the moderate Arab regimes are alarmed; the Americans are alarmed. The fight for Turkey’s soul is about to be joined in a much more vigorous way.

END QUOTES

MY questions:

--Will Turkey's rise continue? Or will it go down the Islamist path?

--A decade from now will crowds in Istanbul be shouting "death to the dictator" just as they did in Tehran a few months ago?

Interesting times ahead. I hope the US has the sense to stay out of it.

A few additional comments that I could not get into the 350 word limit.

(1) Turkey is not an "oildom" like Iran or Saudi Arabia. Nor can it dig riches out of the ground like Australia. This is a country that depends on the prowess of its entrepreneurs and its engineers and scientists. That makes it a very different proposition to most Middle-Eastern Muslim countries.

(2) The foundation for Turkey's prosperity was laid by the previous administration. However the AKP Government that took office in 2001 has until now continued and even expanded on the previous administration's pro-business policies.

(3) It is precisely the entrepreneurial and technological classes that Turkey needs that seem to be the most nervous about creeping Islamisation

(4) The high degree of self-censorship in the Turkish media make it hard to know what is happening beneath the surface. In fairness, this is not new in Turkey. Part of the reason for the AKP's success is the fact that only an Islamist party could take on the previous authoritarian administration.

Dear stevenlmeyer,

You asked;

--Will Turkey's rise continue? Or will it go down the Islamist path?

--A decade from now will crowds in Istanbul be shouting "death to the dictator" just as they did in Tehran a few months ago?

The answer must surely be predicated to a large degree on your last comment i.e. whether or not “the US has the sense to stay out of it.”

From Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival:

“The crucial point was expressed with unusual vulgarity by Pentagon planner Paul Wolfowitz. Like others across the spectrum, he berated the Turkish government for its misbehavior, but went on as well to condemn the military. Wolfowitz of course knows that the military is just behind the scenes in Turkish democracy. But “for whatever reason, they did not play the strong leadership role that we would have expected,” Wolfowitz said, condemning the military for its weakness in permitting the government to honor near-unanimous public opinion. Turkey must therefore step up and say “We made a mistake. Let’s figure out how we can be as helpful as possible to the Americans,” thus demonstrating their understanding of democracy."

If I was an Iranian I would probably be shouting “death to the dictator” with the best of them. In 1953 the US intelligence services engineer a coup to depose the democratically elected Prime Minister Muhammad Mussadeq, a leading exponent of nationalising the oil industry. They replace him with a dictator, the Shah whose vicious secret police they train and who is then overthrown by a revolution which installs a theocracy. Yup I'd be cranky as well.

So if the Yanks and the Israelis can keep their hands off Turkey then there is hope for the future, if not then who knows.

csteele

I put it to you that the biggest problem facing the Turks today is the absence of a truly free media and the difficulty Turks encounter when they try to discuss vital national issues openly. Once the entrepreneurs and technologists get spooked all bets are off.It does not need any intervention by the Americans.

Dear stevenlmeyer,

You will have to tell me how Singapore manages to do so well then.

In Freedomhouse's Freedom of the Press World Rankings Turkey is rated at 104th while Singapore is at 151st in the world.

http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=1

Indeed Turkey has managed to climb 6 places from the year before and to be fair Singapore has moved up 4.

Australia on the other hand has managed to drop 3 places from 35th to 38th during the same period. Compare us to New Zealand which sits at 12th.

Perhaps it is your new homeland that needs some attention, or is the elephant in the room your view of Islam?

csteele,

Singapore is a city state. You cannot compare a geographically compact city to a big sprawling country of close to 80 million people.

Really we could talk about Singapore Inc. It is more like a very well run multinational company that a country.

Australia, as I was careful to note in my first post, is primarily a raw materials exporter. It does not depend on a technological or entrepreneurial class in the same way that Turkey does. (More's the pity!)

Also Australia is in any case a lot more free than Turkey.

The question you should be asking yourself is not what is the elephant in my room, but what could be the elephant in the room of the entrepreneurs, scientists and engineers who made Turkey the powerhouse it has become. It is they who MAY be getting spooked by creeping Islamism.

You mentioned the Shah. I am old enough to remember him. He was a nasty piece of work. But during his rule an entrepreneurial class sprung up in Iran. Perhaps without the Islamic revolution Iran could have become an economic powerhouse like Turkey instead of a pathetic little dictatorship.

Interestingly a number of Iranians fled to South Africa after the Islamic Revolution which is where I met them. Most moved on to the US and Germany which are now reaping the benefits of their enterprise.