(THIS ARTICLE IS ONLY MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
By: Ragnar Næs and Jørgen Lorentzen
What is happening in Turkey today is both a dramatic course change in the country's relationship with the West and a continuation of the problems the Turks have had in developing a functioning democracy. It is dramatic because, since the end of the 1700 century, the Turks have been trying to emulate the model Europeans were developing – and a continuation of the problems because there are now new abuses of power against the people of a country where reformers have never quite succeeded in develop a functioning democracy. There were good efforts in 1876, as progressive Ottomans launched the world's first multicultural parliament consisting of Turks, Arabs, Jews, Greeks and Armenians – and then in the period 1909 – 1913. Both attempts failed as a result of war and imperialist aggression from Russia and the West. But with Atatürk and Kemalism, Turkey finally got its "western model" in the form of an authoritarian secular government.
Nevertheless, the importance of democracy gradually diminished. . .
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