ANKARA -- "The main obstacle to democracy is not Islam, but Kemalism," says Atilla Yayla, the unassuming head of Turkey's Association for Liberal Thinking. Turkey is a critically important country, but also an amazingly complicated and frustrating one. And while it has done better than most other Muslim countries in mixing Islam and secularism, as a democracy it remains a work in progress.
Turkey today is suffering political instability, with the illness of Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit. It is still recovering from the economic crisis of the last two years. And it is at a geopolitical epicenter: eastern Mediterranean, Mideast and South Asia.
Ankara's future is still in play, as contending factions battle over joining the European Union. Ankara is a nominal democracy, with regular elections. Yet the military holds ultimate power, upending governments and dissolving political parties. This frustrates Turks who are liberal, in a classical sense, supporting individual liberty, economic freedom and political democracy. Professor Soli Ozel at Istanbul's Bilgi University commented sardonically, "They have the bayonets and we don't."