Turkish prime minister Recep Erdoğan walks out of the room at the 2009 World Economic Forum in Davos after clashing with Shimon Peres over Israel’s attack on Gaza
Over at the Washington Times, Daniel Pipes offers a bizarre assessment of Turkey and Iran and their future political evolution.
According to Pipes, experience of an Islamic state has caused Iranians to become disillusioned with Islamism, opening up the prospect of the country eventually adopting a secular pro-western form of government. However, “while the Turkish government presents few immediate dangers, its more subtle application of Islamism’s hideous principles makes it loom large as a future threat”.
If the AKP wins the next parliamentary elections, Pipes asserts, “that will likely establish the premise for them to remain enduringly in power, during which they will bend the country to fit their will, instituting Islamic law (the Sharia), and building an Islamic order resembling Khomeini’s idealized polity”.
Pipes concludes: “Long after Khomeini and Osama bin Laden are forgotten, I venture, Mr. Erdogan and his colleagues will be remembered as the inventors of a more lasting and insidious form of Islamism.”
You can’t help suspecting that Pipes’ attempt to transform the Justice and Development Party into an Islamist bogeyman is not unconnected with the fact that under the AKP the Turkish government has emerged as a severe critic of Israel, first over the Gaza war and then over the Gaza flotilla raid.
Someone set fire to an Islamic center on Sunday, two days after a man who worshipped there was accused of trying to blow up a van full of explosives during Portland’s Christmas tree lighting ceremony. Other Muslims fear it could be the first volley of misplaced retribution.
