Islamists in Charge

"Something is changing in the Turks’ sense of who they are. You hear it from cab drivers or columnists, old friends and fresh acquaintances. For a long time, the Turks put their Turkish identity first, snubbing their Muslim neighborhood. Now they’re acting like members of the Muslim umma.

The Justice and Development Party (AKP), which assumed power in November 2002, is driving this change. Rooted in Turkey’s Islamist opposition, the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been widening the wedges between Turkey and the West, while building bridges with the Muslim Middle East. If anyone had doubts about the AKP’s Islamism, the proof is in the party’s foreign-policy pudding.

Since the AKP took over, Turkish attitudes toward the U.S. have soured significantly. Four years of harsh criticism of American foreign policy in the Middle East—last year’s U.S. military incursions into Fallujah, for example, were officially a “genocide” in Turkey—has created what could be a permanent dent in public opinion." Read on.