#1232 Pipes on Erdoğan's decade as PM of Turkey

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Please take a moment to visit and log in at the subscriber area, and submit your city & country location. We will use this information in future to invite you to any events that we organize in your area. Dear Reader: I am pleased to invite my readers to a gratis event in Palm Beach, Florida. José María Aznar, the eminent two-term prime minister of Spain in 1996-2004, launched the Friends of Israel Initiative, a group of high-ranking figures who fight the delegitimization of Israel moral and strategic grounds, in 2010. The organization does unique person-to-person work at the loftiest levels of diplomacy. I will engage Prime Minister Aznar in conversation on his topic of "Fighting for Israel: My Second Career" at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 2 at Temple Emanu-El of Palm Beach, 190 North County Road, Palm Beach 33480. A dessert reception follows. For more details, click here. If you can attend, please RSVP by Friday, March 29 to melanie@tepb.org or 561-832-0804. Yours sincerely, Daniel Pipes Erdoğan's Decade as Prime Minister of Turkey by Daniel Pipes March 14, 2013 Cross-posted from National Review Online, The Corner http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2013/03/erdogan-decade-as-prime-minister-of-turkey Send Comment RSS Share: Be the first of your friends to like this. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has served longer than any person as prime minister of the Republic of Turkey, today marks his completion of a full decade in that office, having entered it on March 14, 2003. Born in February 1954, he is now 59 years old. And while he has a potentially long political career ahead of him, he reportedly suffers from some serious ailments that could cut it short. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in action. The only comparable figure in in modern Turkish history is Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the republic and dominant figure. It is reasonable to see Erdoğan as the anti-Atatürk, the leader who seeks to undo substantial parts of his predecessor's legacy, especially his rejection of Shari'a, or Islamic law. One can also see him as the politician who turns Islamism into a nearly viable political program. Erdoğan's main challenges are three-fold: an electorate increasingly wary of his domineering ways, an ever-more restive Kurdish population, and a problematic regional alignment in which, as Ian O. Lesser put it in analysis published yesterday, "Ankara faces some troubling cold wars, new and old, that will shape the strategic environment and the nature of Turkey's security partnerships." Westerners have been conspicuously slow in understanding just what a threat Erdoğan presents; one can only hope that his second decade will prompt more understanding than the first. (March 14, 2013) Related Topics:  Turkey and Turks This text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete and accurate information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.

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