Here is an excellent article providing background to the current situation in Turkey and the importance of the elections this weekend.

Old versus the new as Turkey finds its way - In Depth - theage.com.au

The economic miracle across Anatolia, Turkey's heartland, has happened so fast that sons of peasants who could not read are sending their children overseas to study. Dr Ibrahim Kalin, of Ankara's SETA think tank, says that is changing Turkey.

'Kids coming out of these small places … are going to New York or London to be educated. When they come back, Istanbul and Ankara suddenly look small, and they think, 'How can you claim to be the elite?' They don't have an inferiority complex any more.'

Only five years old, the AKP is part of this phenomenon, says Kalin: a party to represent a new class. It provokes derision in the best Istanbul cafes. Yes, Erdogan is charismatic, but he's common. Look at how he eats, with one hand. As for Gul, he made a traditional Muslim marriage to a 15-year-old girl, 15 years his junior! On the surface the talk is about religion, but really it is about class and expresses a division that goes back to the birth of the nation.

Ataturk set Turkey on what his biographer Andrew Mango calls "a forced march to modernity". Every reform — from abolishing religious courts and polygamy to introducing Latin script and giving women the vote — was done in the name of Westernisation and against what he saw as the backwardness of Islam.

Yet although Ataturk created Turkish democracy, he was not at heart a democrat. His revolution was a project of the secular elites, who turned their faces to Europe, producing an existential desire to belong to the West that has never gone away. Meanwhile, they turned their backs on the illiterate Muslims of Anatolia. But one day the "black Turks", as the elites call them, would knock on the door.

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It is true it made changes as part of its bid to get into the EU. Critics who say there is a hidden Islamist agenda accuse the AKP of practising takiye, a concept that allows the faithful to lie to promote Islam. Erdogan proposed making adultery illegal then backed down. Some AKP mayors have banned alcohol and introduced segregated sporting facilities. But is there really a secret plan to introduce sharia?

Baskin Oran is a hero of the Turkish left, a Marxist politics professor who is running as an independent candidate on a human rights agenda. If anyone should fear the rise of a reactionary Islam it is him.

Oran is dismayed that the AKP has not moved to prevent the rising number of prosecutions of people for the crime of "insulting Turkishness" — the case of Nobel Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk being the most famous example. Yet he thinks the idea the AKP "is Islamist is baloney". Rather, it represents emerging capitalists, whose attraction to the profit motive will force their faith ever further into private life. Money, Erdogan has proclaimed, "has no religion".

A few other articles on the same topic:

Bitter election fight polarizes Turkey
Q&A: Your questions on Turkey election


I'm sure that there is no one who is going to talk publicly about the issue that I care about for Turkey: Freedom of religion for the few thousand Turks who have turned away from Islam to follow Jesus Christ. But there is One who has a plan for Turkey which transcends politics, class struggles, religion, military strategy, and social stress. And for Him, those few thousand souls are at the very center of the agenda.

Daniel 2:20b-21

“ Blessed be the name of God forever and ever,
For wisdom and might are His.
21 And He changes the times and the seasons;
He removes kings and raises up kings;
He gives wisdom to the wise
And knowledge to those who have understanding."


Your kingdom come, Your will be done, in Turkey as it is in heaven!