The U.S. and Europe, having missed a historic opportunity to repel fundamentalism by fostering alternate paradigms, seem capable of repeating their blunder. With Turkey, they still have a window. Encouraged intelligently, the Turkish model can serve the Islamic world, offering an alternative to Saudi and Iranian models. A stable, secular Turkic nexus that extends through the Silk Road up to the borders of Western China also offers a potent tool to Western interests, and a counter to the malign Pakistani-Afghan leverage on Central Asia. All of this requires that Western allies support Turkey in a more sophisticated way.
Turkey already runs the strongest economy in the region.
It has been a rough passage, controversial and divisive. A democratically-elected, Islamist government was summarily ejected, its political party banned. Ever increasing numbers of Islamic sympathizers in the army are purged at frequent intervals. In pursuit of a Western tradition that cared so little for their aspirations, Turks began to wonder if it was all worth it. Their ethnic cousins in Azerbaijan were decimated in a civil war with Armenian insurgents backed by Russian arms and Western public opinion, creating one million Azeri refugees.