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Commentary Week In Review

Guy Taylor | Bio | 01 Sep 2007

The Commentary Week in Review is posted on the blog every Friday. Drawing from more than two dozen English-language news outlets worldwide, the column highlights notable op-eds on major issues from the past week.

Headscarves and Military Uniforms;
What Gul Means for Turkey

The Aug. 28 ascension of Justice and Development Party member and former Islamist Abdullah Gul to the Turkish presidency (here's a CNN report on it) prompted a barrage of op-eds about what the near and distant future will hold for Turkey, which enjoys a border with Iran, Syria and Iraq.

Claiming Gul's election "marks a watershed in the country's history," Soli Ozel reminded us in the Aug. 28 Guardian how "in July, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) -- religiously conservative but economically liberal -- won a landslide in parliamentary elections called after the military balked at seeing Gul become president."

"That victory," asserted Ozel, "combined with Gul's election, confirm the AKP's emergence as a party of realignment, and that, despite an upsurge of xenophobic nationalism, Turks wanted to integrate with the European Union."

According to Ozel:

Headscarves aside, Ozel, who noted that "in times of peace, [the Turkish president] is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces," maintained the "crisis over the presidential election was actually a crisis of the constitutional order installed by the military when it ruled from 1980-1983."

"That constitution -- unlike Ataturk's -- was written by and for the military on the assumption that the cold war would never end, and that the president would always be either a military person or someone close to the military," he wrote, concluding that:


Gul's Election "a Joke"

Tulin Daloglu argued in the Aug. 28 Washington Times that the AKP's victory "doesn't negate the millions of protesters who demonstrated in order to try to prevent Mr. Gul and his wife, who wears a headscarf, from assuming office."

"The protesters fear a president with a background in political Islam," wrote Daloglu. "But they have to take this day as a joke, hoping that it will bring laughter of unity at the end. Yet they have reason to be concerned."

Daloglu cited Turkey's relationship with Israel as a particularly sensitive one, deserving of attention as the Gul presidency develops:


Daloglu asserted that "Turks must not allow controversy over Armenian genocide claims to hijack their relationship with Israel."

"The AKP must fight Turkish anti-Semitism," he wrote. "Turkey must acknowledge that a good relationship with Israel is vital to its relationship with the West."

Head to Head With the Generals

Writing in the Aug. 29 Daily Telegraph, Damien McElroy, homed in on the relationship between the Turkish presidency and the military, asserting that Gul, who served as Turkey's foreign minister for the past five years, is "likely to find promotion to the nation's presidency to be a bed of thorns."

"Because Mr. Gul is a conservative Islamist, his elevation to the top office has been resisted at every turn by the generals," wrote McElroy. "As late as Monday, General Yasar Buyukanit, chief of the general staff, had a signed statement posted on its internet site vowing to resist 'centres of evil' working to destroy the state's secular principles."

But, McElroy argued, while Gul's tenure could revolve around his views on religion and the military, what may really matter in the end are his economic policies.


Is Benazir Bhutto Really
Reemerging in Pakistan?

Just as the straight news pages were attempting to hash out precisely what was going in talks between Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto, the country's exiled former prime minister (Note this New York Times report on the matter), a few key op-eds on the subject emerged in the U.S. and British press -- one by Bhutto herself.

"In a perfect world, perhaps the military would not play a role in politics. But Pakistan is less than perfect in this regard," Bhutto wrote in the Aug. 30 Los Angeles Times. "The security forces fundamentally have served as a political institution in Pakistan, ruling either directly, through generals, or indirectly, by manipulating and ultimately sacking democratic governments."

Acknowledging that "some people have been surprised that I have been negotiating a transition to democracy and talking about the future of Pakistan with Musharraf," Bhutto asserted that "on dictatorship, there can be no compromise. The parliament must be supreme. That's why I have made it clear to Musharraf that my party, the Pakistan People's Party, supports the constitution, which requires that the president be a civilian who is legitimately selected by the parliament and provincial assemblies."

She explained:


Bhutto "out of touch"

While it wasn't until the next day that The New York Times reported Musharraf's denial of such a development, Tariq Ali asserted in his own op-ed in the Aug. 30 Guardian that Bhutto "is sadly out of touch."

"For a politician whose sycophantic colleagues boast that she is closer to the pulse of the people than any of her rivals, Benazir Bhutto's decision to do a deal with Pakistan's uniformed president indicates the exact opposite," he wrote.

Ali asserted that:


He went on:


The Commentary Week In Review draws from links aggregated every weekday morning in WPR's Media Roundup, which you can receive by email for free by registering now.