Last I checked some months ago, Ms Applebaum is adjunct fellow at the AEI, the chief Neo Conservative supra-corporate backed think tank which has engineered much of pres Bush's policy both domestic and some foreign. Immediately, Ms Applebaum's slant has to be approached cautiously.

Then, the only 'expert' on Turkey she references is Zeyno Baran. Ms Baran is a Neo Con policy wonk regarding controlling, oppressing, 'conquering and dividing' Muslims, having worked for AEI and ahost of other far right and right wing Neo Con institutes in USA and EU. So her comments should be held with even greater suspicion.

Next, modern Turkish history (1900s to today) is shockingly unreported and unexamined from an objective vantage point. Kemalist Turkey is saluted and celebrated ( Newt Gingrich lauds Kemal's rule as perfect) and its constitution is percieved to have grown from the people's will.

But consider this.

Today, the majority of America distrusts and dislikes Bush. What if before 2006 Congressional elections Bush undertook some nefarious political measures to alter the constitution to advance his GOP leadership, nullify the election, use dictatorial actions to oust Democratic Congressmen and find ways to replace them with GOPers, then omit the state govts in the writing of a new constitution which enshrines all of his ideology, even enforcing his sayings and comments to be taught in every school, making his likeness on every currency and throughout every town building, square, office?

That's Mustafa Kemal, called Ataturk. He alone had the Turkish constitution written in his parliement stacked with Young Turks who frauded, lied, and murdered their way into office. And Kemal had all of this done in his lifetime, with British consent, even before George Orwell wrote 1984 or Animal Farm. Kemal was more Orwellian in his totalitarian 'republic' than Applebaum would even wink to. Yet his constitution continues to be celebrated in the West as the crowning achievement of secularization of Islam?

Bush is saintly compared to Kemal. But Neo Cons ignore that Kemal made the Turkish constitution with no dissent because he killed, imprisoned, tortured, exiled, or silenced all the Hamiltons, Franklins, Adams of Turkey.

Well, Kemal is dead and Kemalism is archaic as it was in the 1970s when it failed to thwart growing communism in Turkey. In response, Turkish generals chose to allow education and practice of Islam again rather than be overtaken by the communists. Modern Muslim movements in Turkey today are successors of that reality: that Kemalism failed and Islam saved Turkey even under secular military rule.

Kemalism and the Turkish constitution are NOT a creation of the will of a people. Its the product of the oppression and dictatorship of a man, Kemal, who just happened to serve the interests of European colonial empires.

So where does Applebaum stand on this? Protect the legacy of Kemalism because it serves the imperial interests of America, as the last Euro centric world empire.

BTW, since this matter is also about women, it should be known that history has shown that Kemal was an infamous philanderer who coerced his subordinates to surrender their secularized daughters and wives to his sexual lechery.

So if a legal majority party which has several times established its popular support through fair elections, advances Islamic practices which the majority of people want and are consistent with their beliefs traditions, and culture and does not victimize or penalize the minority, this is 'tyranny' according to Applebaum? But no mention of Kemal's archaic, Orwellian constitution as 'tyrannical' because it serves American and Neo Con ideological interests?