Mavi Boncuk |
IS ISLAMISM COMPATIBLE WITH DEMOCRACY?
By James Jeffrey and Soner Cagaptay
James Jeffrey is the Philip Solondz Distinguished Visiting Fellow at The Washington Institute and former U.S. ambassador to Turkey and Iraq. Soner Cagaptay is the Beyer Family Fellow and director of the Turkish Research Program at the Institute, and author of "The Rise of Turkey: The Twenty First-Century's First Muslim Power" (http://washin.st/RiseofTurkey
The Hill | September 5, 2014
Read the full version of this excerpt on the Hill website:
http://thehill.com/blogs/
The election of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as the nation's first directly elected president provides significant new fodder for the Washington debate that started following the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran. Soon after Iran fell under autocratic and ideological rule by Islamists, Middle East observers launched a debate to examine one hypothetical alternative: Islamist parties coming to power democratically, and more importantly, governing democratically, once elected.
The Turkish case of Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) government since 2002, one of the only instances where an Islamist party has come to power democratically in the broader Middle East, is perhaps the best test case for this vision. Judging from the direction the now-President Erdogan has taken Turkey in recent years, and his authoritarian emphasis on state unity as the driving force, we need to rethink assumptions about the "mesh" of democratic governance and Islamist thought...
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IS ISLAMISM COMPATIBLE WITH DEMOCRACY?
By James Jeffrey and Soner Cagaptay
James Jeffrey is the Philip Solondz Distinguished Visiting Fellow at The Washington Institute and former U.S. ambassador to Turkey and Iraq. Soner Cagaptay is the Beyer Family Fellow and director of the Turkish Research Program at the Institute, and author of "The Rise of Turkey: The Twenty First-Century's First Muslim Power" (http://washin.st/RiseofTurkey
The Hill | September 5, 2014
Read the full version of this excerpt on the Hill website:
http://thehill.com/blogs/
The election of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as the nation's first directly elected president provides significant new fodder for the Washington debate that started following the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran. Soon after Iran fell under autocratic and ideological rule by Islamists, Middle East observers launched a debate to examine one hypothetical alternative: Islamist parties coming to power democratically, and more importantly, governing democratically, once elected.
The Turkish case of Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) government since 2002, one of the only instances where an Islamist party has come to power democratically in the broader Middle East, is perhaps the best test case for this vision. Judging from the direction the now-President Erdogan has taken Turkey in recent years, and his authoritarian emphasis on state unity as the driving force, we need to rethink assumptions about the "mesh" of democratic governance and Islamist thought...
FULL TEXT