Tuesday, February 01, 2011

How Washington misreads Turkey | Global Post

How Washington misreads Turkey | Global Post: "I'm going to type a word.

Islamist.

What images come to mind?

Now I'm going to type a phrase.

Most dynamic city in the world.


What does it make you think of?

Can you reconcile the two?

Think Islamist, and you probably imagine some un-democratic place with a stagnant, corrupt economy and women encased from head to toe in black cloth. It is joyless and puritanical in the pejorative sense, with innate hostility to America and the West.

Dynamism probably makes you think of New York, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Rio and Mumbai — places where anything-goes-capitalism has revived after a period of recession.

Well, according to a recent Brookings Institution report the world's most dynamic city is Istanbul, whose Islamist former mayor, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is now Turkey's Prime Minister."

No comments: