Five things to understand about Turkey's protests

The unrest is unlikely to become a “Turkish Spring,” but it is testing democracy in Turkey.

4. Are the protests more about Islamization?

Marko Djurica/Reuters
A man sits facing the Ataturk Cultural Center during a protest at Taksim Square in Istanbul, Wednesday, June 19.

For 90 years, Turkey has pursued a number of policies to make the nation more secular and democratic. Beginning in the 1920s with Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, considered the founder of modern Turkey, a number of Turkish figures have sought to incorporate a more Western-style system of government in Turkey.

Erdogan and his AKP party are seen as trying to centralize power and impose conservative Islamic values on Turkish society. Many of those who are now at odds with the government see Erdogan as trying to control their lifestyle choices and undo reforms that took decades to achieve.

This is particularly upsetting for those who viewed Erdogan as an admirable reformer for the first several years after he took office in 2002. Under his leadership, the Turkish economy has tripled in size. He made a number of reforms to improve the chances of Turkey’s European membership bid, and he actively tried to make a peace deal with Kurdish militants. 

Coming after these popular reforms, his conservative shift has jarred his opponents even more severely.

4 of 5

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.