Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyib Erdogan this week
unveiled his long-promised “reform package” to “chart the path of the nation”
for the next 10 years — that is, through 2023, 100 years after the founding of
Turkey as a republic. Which is ironic,
since Erdogan seems bent on abolishing that republic in all but name.
His plan to amend the Constitution to replace the
long-tested parliamentary system with a presidential one (with himself as
president and commander-in-chief) is only part of it. He’d also undo the key
achievement of Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey.
In the 1920s, Ataturk created the Turkish nation from the
debris of the Ottoman Empire. Ataturk and the military and intellectual elite
around him replaced Islam as the chief bond between the land’s many ethnic
communities with Turkish nationhood. Over
the past 90 years, this project has not had 100 percent success. Nevertheless,
it managed to create a strong sense of bonding among a majority of the
citizens
Now Erdogan is out to undermine that in two ways…..ToRead More……
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