Turkey: Two More Steps Toward Islamism

By Barry Rubin

In Washington DC they are still ridiculing the idea that Turkey’s government is Islamist, is working step by step to transform fundamentally that country’s state and society, or that it is closer to Tehran than to the United States nowadays or more friendly to Hamas and Hizballah than to Israel.

Yet anyone who actually talks to Turks or looks at daily life there—and that includes the U.S. embassy in Ankara—knew better.

First, a bombshell. No sooner have the heads of the armed forces resigned than the regime issues an arrest warrent for seven senior officers. The Turkish army is finished as a political force--partly thanks to the European Union insisting that it withdraw from a political role--while the courts are being neutralized and the media is being bought up. There is no institution left to prevent the current regime from Islamizing Turkey and fundamentally transforming its society.

Read it all