Robert Merry considers modern Turkey in light of Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” thesis:

In fact, there is little danger that Turkey, a relatively stable democracy for nearly a century, will turn into an Islamist dictatorship. And the country’s recent moves away from the strong secularism of its modern founder, Kemal Ataturk, far from a cause of concern, should be greeted in the West as a healthy development. And Huntington explains why, although he died in 2008 and wrote before the emergence of Turkey’s prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, architect of the strategic changes in Turkish policy that so rankle some Americans.

We can debate just how democratic Turkey has been for much of the last century, but Merry’s larger point is valid. Indeed, Turkey’s political development since the death of Ataturk has been one of gradual democratization, which has accelerated in the last two decades. We shouldn’t panic if Turkey did become less secular, but we also shouldn’t exaggerate how far Turkey has moved away from Kemalist secularism. For all of the hyperventilating about the AKP, Turkey is still under a secular constitution. Whether or not decreasing secularism would be a healthy development for Turkey is for Turkish citizens to decide, but there is no real reason for the U.S. to fear it.

There is a danger that Turkey is turning back into a one-party state thanks to the successes of the AKP and the hopeless state of the Kemalist opposition, but most of the concerns we hear about the AKP in the West center on the substance of Turkish foreign policy rather than its domestic abuses of power. The nostalgia for a more activist Turkish military that some Westerners seem to feel is mostly an expression of anxiety that Turkey no longer falls in line as it once did. As Merry writes:

This is difficult to accept for those who want America to hold sway wherever in the world it may wish to hold sway at any given time. They want Turkey to play the same role vis-à-vis America that it played during the Cold War. But the Cold War is over, and Turkey is playing a role now much more in keeping with its true heritage. As Huntington predicted, “At some point, Turkey could be ready to give up its frustrating and humiliating role as a beggar pleading for membership in the West and to resume its much more impressive and elevated historical role as the principal Islamic interlocutor.”

P.S. Read Lewis McCrary’s profile of Robert Merry and his editorial role at The National Interest from the current issue of TAC.