Turkey

The authors contend that the primary motive behind the AKP's stance toward the Arab regimes is not money, but rather the desire to show solidarity with certain anti-American regimes and distaste for pro-American ones.

While the Turkish Justice and Development Party's (AKP's) record on democracy and foreign policy is less than perfectly in accord with European or U.S. preferences, the Turkish opposition has often appeared even worse, given its chauvinistic nationalism, shortsightedness, and anti-Western views. Signs indicate, however, that this dynamic is changing. Since

The lesson of the AKP experience for the Arab world and likely Muslim Brotherhood governments is that religious orthodoxy is an ideological beauty contest, in which the winner is always the ugly guy.

In the absence of a free media in Turkey, the platform offered by the foreign media may become the only one in which the AKP's voice of disagreement with the U.S. can be heard.

Late last month, two diplomatic rows erupted when French president Nicolas Sarkozy visited Turkey and Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Germany. Sarkozy had an unfriendly welcome in Ankara, including a deliberately unflattering photo that showed Erdogan towering over him during a handshake. And during a speech in Dusseldorf

Have doubts that Turkey has changed since the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, assumed power in 2002? A look at what arouses popular anger in Turkey today reveals a society in flux -- one rapidly adopting new and risky political sensitivities. In the past, actions considered offensive to Turkish

Egypt's transition toward a post-Hosni Mubarak era, as incremental and painful as it might be, has sparked interest in the "Turkish model" of democracy-craft, i.e. the art of conducting democratic affairs, which in Turkey involves the military playing a stabilizing role during the transition process while Islamist parties moderate through

Though unique in many ways, Malaysia suggests lessons for Turkey's future: an increasingly ideologically oriented foreign policy enacted in tandem with a similarly informed social agenda can result in an illiberal and non-Western society, despite its economic modernity.

As Turkey approaches elections in June 2011, a consolidation of political parties appears to be in the making, under the auspices of the governing Justice and Development Party, or AKP.