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Biden pushes leadership role for Turkey's Islamist leaders

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  • Biden pushes leadership role for Turkey's Islamist leaders

    Daily Caller , DC
    April 27 2012


    Biden pushes leadership role for Turkey's Islamist leaders

    Published: 3:54 PM 04/27/2012
    By Neil Munro


    On Friday Vice President Joe Biden offered Turkey's Islamist
    government a leading role in the Middle East, despite its recent
    crackdown on dissidents, expansion of Islamic culture and education,
    and regional conflicts with Greece and Israel.

    `We're looking for Turkish leadership in the rest of that entire
    region,' Biden declared at a fundraiser attended by roughly 200 people
    from the Turkish and Azerbaijani communities, according to a White
    House pool report.

    `It's a model as to how you can have an Islamic population, an Islamic
    state and a democracy, something the rest of the region is groping to
    figure out how to do,' he told the audience, who paid up to $2,500
    each to attend the fundraiser.

    Since last June Turkey's Islamist government, led by Recep Erdogan,
    `has restricted freedom of expression, association, and assembly with
    laws that allow authorities to jail its critics for many months or
    years while they stand trial for alleged terrorism offenses on the
    basis of flimsy evidence,' according to a January report by the
    left-wing group Human Rights Watch.

    The Turkish government's Islamist policies also clash with Biden's
    progressive policies, and with American culture and laws in general.

    For example, on April 18 Biden touted the Violence Against Women Act
    and slammed GOP proposals to upgrade the law.

    However, in Turkey, `violence in the home is endemic, and police and
    courts regularly fail to protect women who have applied for protection
    orders under the Family Protection Law [and] reports of spouses and
    family members killing women rose in 2011,' Human Rights Watch
    reported. (RELATED: Full coverage of Joe Biden)

    In the United States, Obama's government has vigorously opposed
    charter schools and has imposed new regulations requiring religious
    groups to arrange free birth-control services for their employees.

    But in March, Erdogan's government expanded the role of Islamic
    religious groups by passing a law allowing government-funded Islamic
    schools for his nation's children.

    In June 2001, Obama declared that `Israel's security will always be at
    the top tier of considerations in terms of how America manages its
    foreign policy.'

    Turkey's Islamist government, However, has allowed an anti-Israeli
    flotilla to sail from Turkish ports. Islamists on one ship attacked
    Israeli borders, leading to the death of eight Islamists, and much
    criticism of Israel.

    Nonetheless, Obama has frequently states his strong support for
    Erdogan. `I just want to say how much I appreciate the opportunity to
    once again meet with my friend and colleague, Prime Minister Erdogan.
    ... [He is] an outstanding partner and an outstanding friend on a wide
    range of issues,' Obama said at a March 25 meeting in Korea called to
    combat the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

    To maintain good relations with Turkey, Obama also refused on April 24
    to label Turkey's murder of 1.5 Armenians during World War I as
    genocide. Armenians are a Christian minority in Turkey.

    In 2008, Obama promised Armenian-American groups that he would would
    label those murders as genocide. But American-Armenians have little
    political clout, partly because they don't live in swing states and
    don't contribute much to political campaigns.

    Biden said the U.S. would expand its cooperation with Turkey's Islamic
    government, partly because the region's Arab Spring revolutions have
    boosted the role and power of Islamist groups that aim to impose
    traditional Islamic laws and beliefs on people in Egypt, Libya,
    Tunisia, Morocco and other countries in the region.

    For example, after the 2011 uprising in Egypt - which Obama tacitly
    supported by urging Egypt's rule to resign - Egypt's population has
    elected a supermajority of Islamists of the country's parliament.

    `No one knows whether that spring will turn to winter tomorrow [and]
    nobody knows exactly how that's going to go,' the president said. `But
    with the strong leadership of Turkey we are reassured, there's nothing
    we do that we don't coordinate.'

    Turkey's ability to moderate the Islamist revolution is limited
    because Islamists in Egypt and nearby countries distrust Turkey's
    government. They fear Turkey will seek a dominant role in the region,
    as it once had when its Ottoman Empire governed the region from the
    1300s until 1923.

    Still, Biden and Obama are backing Turkey.

    `Turkey is such an incredible model,' Biden told his fundraiser audience Friday.


    http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/27/biden-pushes-leadership-role-for-turkeys-islamist-leaders/

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