The struggle for Turkey's soul

Dozens of top Turkish military officers were recently arrested for plotting a coup. Why is Turkey in turmoil?

A member of the Turkish military on patrol.
(Image credit: Corbis)

What’s really going on in Turkey?

A simmering power struggle has burst into the open, pitting Turkey’s secular military against its Islamist-leaning civilian leadership. Turkey, located at the crucial crossroad where Europe meets the Middle East, is one of the world’s largest democracies with a Muslim majority, and it has the second-largest military in NATO. The country has long modeled its government on the secular democracies of the West, but that may be changing. In 2002, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamist-leaning Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power, installing in the government men who previously belonged to banned Islamic parties. Erdogan quickly began to blur the lines between mosque and state. One of Erdogan’s first actions was a push to allow religious head scarves to be worn in universities and government offices. More recently, Erdogan opened up trade and closer relations with Iran, called the terrorists of Hamas “my brothers,” and demanded the expulsion of Israel from the U.N.

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