As Turkey's dominant Premier, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has done much to deepen the country's long-troubled institutions of democracy. But he may be remembered instead for his authoritarian streak
By Karl Vick
Turkey — the bridge between East and West. That’s how the cliché goes, a saying that endures because it’s physically true: “Welcome to Europe” reads the sign on one side of a bridge over the Bosporus, the strait that divides Istanbul. “Welcome to Asia” is the sign on the other. But the passage also evokes transitions of other, less tangible sorts, one of which is playing out in the persistent civic unrest that’s knocked the country’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan so badly off stride. Turkey’s own transition, to a fully fledged democracy, is not yet complete. As street protests enter a fourth week in Turkey’s major cities, Erdogan finds himself tugged alternately by the imperfect democracy that brought him to power and the authoritarian legacy that lingers in Turkey’s body politic.
“All the world was authoritarian until the middle of the 19th century or so,” notes Rami G. Khouri, head of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. “Democracy is a very young tradition in even countries like France.” It’s even younger in Turkey, which until 1924 wasn’t even a country.
Read more: http://world.time.com/2013/06/24/erdogans-paradox-turkish-leader-struggles-between-authoritarianism-and-democracy/#ixzz2XRPAo1rW
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