Joe Biden Thinks Democracy and Islam Can Coexist
Joe Biden, ever the inaccurate Joe, recently said that he sees a leading role for Turkey’s Islamists in the Middle East. He thinks that democracy and an Islamic state can co-exist even though they are diametrically opposed. Read at The Daily Caller
Since the Islamists have come to power under Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the trend has been anything but democratic -
NY Times:…At a time when Washington and Europe were praising Turkey as a model of Muslim democracy for the Arab world, Turkish human rights advocates said in early January 2012 that the government had been showing an ominous trend toward repressing freedom of the press through a mixture of intimidation, arrests and financial machinations, including the sale in 2008 of a newspaper and a television station to a company linked to the prime minister’s son-in-law.
As of early 2012, there were 97 members of the news media in jail in Turkey, including journalists, publishers and distributors, according to the Turkish Journalists’ Union, a figure that rights groups say exceeds the number detained in China. The Turkish government denies the figure and insists that with the exception of four cases, those arrested have all been charged with activities other than reporting.
The arrests threatened to darken the image of Mr. Erdogan, who is lionized in the Middle East as a powerful leader who can stand up to Israel and the West. Widely credited with taming Turkey’s military and forging a religiously conservative government that marries strong economic growth with democracy and religious tolerance, he has proved prickly and thin-skinned on more than one occasion. It is that sensitivity bordering on arrogance, human rights advocates say, that contributes to his animus against the news media…
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