"The government of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan was last elected in June, 2011, at which time his Justice and Development Party (AKP) received about half the votes in the country (an improvement on past performances). The elections appear to be on the up and up, and AK seems genuinely popular in the countryside and in many urban districts"
I have talked to men who served in the Turkish army and intelligence services would call that claim dubious. There is a growing concern of fraudulent elections with the AKP.
Furthermore, talking with people in Turkey this spring, many middle-class people will tell you that this economic growth is smoke and mirrors. They claim none of this growth is being seen by the middle class, instead a majority of it is going to the wealthy with connections to the AKP.
There is no denying to wrongs of the Kemalists in the past, but that does not allow for leeway of the wrongs by the AKP.
As an undergrad at Michigan I used to go to Canada, one of my buddies was from Toronto. The US Border Patrol is laughable. We would always get detained and searched for drugs and fake ideas. They'd yell at us, scream in our face "WHERE ARE THE DRUGS?!" Funny thing is after all of this, the USBP didn't realize, one time, that my friends US Passport was 6 months expired...amazing.
Even bigger in the irony is how many "Chirstians" in this country who would be outraged at this want to assert that the Declaration and Constitution are Christian documents based on the biblical law. Furthermore, it seems like every now and then we have a problem with a conservative judge asserting the authority of the ten commandments in his/her courthouse. Sigh, the projection of the american right on to the islamic world is at an unbelievable level.
"The government of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan was last elected in June, 2011, at which time his Justice and Development Party (AKP) received about half the votes in the country (an improvement on past performances). The elections appear to be on the up and up, and AK seems genuinely popular in the countryside and in many urban districts"
I have talked to men who served in the Turkish army and intelligence services would call that claim dubious. There is a growing concern of fraudulent elections with the AKP.
Furthermore, talking with people in Turkey this spring, many middle-class people will tell you that this economic growth is smoke and mirrors. They claim none of this growth is being seen by the middle class, instead a majority of it is going to the wealthy with connections to the AKP.
There is no denying to wrongs of the Kemalists in the past, but that does not allow for leeway of the wrongs by the AKP.
As an undergrad at Michigan I used to go to Canada, one of my buddies was from Toronto. The US Border Patrol is laughable. We would always get detained and searched for drugs and fake ideas. They'd yell at us, scream in our face "WHERE ARE THE DRUGS?!" Funny thing is after all of this, the USBP didn't realize, one time, that my friends US Passport was 6 months expired...amazing.
Even bigger in the irony is how many "Chirstians" in this country who would be outraged at this want to assert that the Declaration and Constitution are Christian documents based on the biblical law. Furthermore, it seems like every now and then we have a problem with a conservative judge asserting the authority of the ten commandments in his/her courthouse. Sigh, the projection of the american right on to the islamic world is at an unbelievable level.