Costello may have noticed that his speech praising Turkey coincided with the imprisonment and trial by secular courts of yet another Turkish writer for the charge of ‘insulting Turkishness.’ However, recent events in Turkey have shown that, for many Turks, secularism and democracy don’t always go together. You don’t see many imams trying to impose opposition to embryonic stem cell research on the rest of us. (Of course, I could dismiss such arguments as pure hypocrisy coming from an organisation whose agenda includes ensuring that our laws reflect conservative interpretations of Christianity. Wallace referred to tensions between Muslim and non-Muslim Australians being affected by ‘a constant stream of things which attack our sensibility in the West, in terms of the relationship between Islam and/or the Church and State within Islam.’ His message was recently echoed by ACL’s Managing Director, Jim Wallace, on ABC TV’s Difference of Opinion. Sheik Pete declared that Aussie Muslims needed to learn from Turkish secularism if they were to truly feel welcome in Australia. Last September, Sheik Peter bin Costello issued a fatwa to a national conference of the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL). In Australia, Turkey has been held up as a model of the separation of Church and State.

So exactly how did a Party become so popular as to hold a clear majority of seats in the Turkish Parliament? And why should we, in Australia, give a damn?

Recently, two million people marched in major Turkish cities to protest against this government. It’s also described as a government wishing to introduce sharia (Islamic sacred law) by stealth. Well, in some parts of Turkey, this kind of government is described as a threat to democracy, secularism and freedom. How would you describe a government which represents a combination of socially conservative politics, free market economics, genuine improvements in the human rights of ethnic minorities, a strongly pro-Western foreign policy, strong relations with Israel (including active encouragement of Muslim countries to recognise and establish diplomatic relations with Israel), sponsorship of constitutional amendments to keep the military out of politics, greater freedom to express religion in public spaces, and enabling soccer to remain the real religion of civil society?

Atatürk by Andrew Mango