Sunday, July 22, 2007
Islamists win in Turkey
As expected, prime minister Recep Erdogan's moderate Islamist party (AK) won today's elections in Turkey, though with a slightly smaller majority than before (341 seats of 550, down from 351). The major way this is likely to affect the United States is that the Turkish government will be under more pressure to undertake cross-border raids into Iraq to go after the PKK Kurdish guerrillas who have been using Iraqi territory to do raids into Turkey, part of an ongoing resistance/revolutionary/separatist Kurdish movement. Whether they'll do it is unknown, but if they do it will present a dilemma for the U.S.
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2 comments:
The other two secular parties are far more anti-American and anti-European compared to AK (who wants to joins EU). The secular parties would have gone to war against Kurds in Iraq more readily than AK.
You're probably right.
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