At the protests in Izmir, Turkey yesterday, citizens made the strongest outcry yet to keep the government secular. An estimated 1.5 MILLION people showed up - in trains, planes and automobiles:
Choking the highways and crammed onto ferries, hundreds of thousands of Turks streamed into this port city yesterday in an enormous show of opposition to the pro-Islamic ruling party, increasing pressure on the government ahead of early elections...."I am here to defend my country," said Yuksel Uysal, a teacher. "I am here to defend Ataturk's revolution.''
The elections are July 22. They are of monumental significance in measuring the viability of democratic and secular states in the Middle East - and in asking the question Ataturk tried to put to rest eighty years ago: can the church/state divide live in the Muslim World?
I have a friend at the AP desk in Istanbul. I also have a friend here in New York who leaves tomorrow on a missionary trip to Turkey with her Presbyterian church. Though neither of them are at these rallies, I keep thinking how they should be. We all should. A secular state is, as I've said, a tender thing.
Which raises the larger question - barring jumping on that ferry and holding up "Ataturk 4-Ever" signs, how does the West best support secular states abroad?
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