Turkey touches Iraq. It also touches Iran and Syria. It is in both Europe and Asia, while its population is both Muslim and secular. Its economy has grown at a rate of 8% for each of the last three years, but in 2001 agriculture still accounted for over 40% of GDP, with 50% of the population living below international poverty standards. Given its geographic location, political makeup and economic potential, it might well be the center of US attention. But the country has been virtually absent from US news reporting since it refused to host US troops in the lead up to the second Iraq war in early 2003 (and then quietly sent 10,000 of its own troops to America's aid later that year).

If we were watching, we might notice in Turkey a model for a secular Middle Eastern nation that recognizes the rights of its multi-ethnic population. Well, sort of. As much as the country is currently a functioning Muslim democracy (which, contrary to the beliefs of many on both the right and left, can exist), its journey along that road has been fitful and marked by varying degrees of human rights abuse, military rule and authoritarianism. Its continued struggles with Kurdish "insurgency" in the southeastern portion of the country, its not-always-independent judiciary and its decidedly mixed labor policies, reveal that democracy is far from a done deal in that country. But in the years and decades ahead, as America continues the process of "rebuilding Iraq," it might do us some good to listen to the Turks as a nation that has been there before, that has attempted to build a democracy after years of autocratic rule.

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In fact, it is these very starts and stops of the democratic process that may provide the most important guides to Americans trying to reconcile Bush administration claims of consistent progress with daily media reports of widespread violence and chaos in Iraq. Turkey, for all intents and purposes, became the independent nation we think of today in 1923 when its Parliament elected Mustafa Kemal as the Republic's first president. Through a series of autocratic decrees, Kemal (who later became known as Ataturk, meaning Father of the Turks) instituted a series of secularizing reforms in both government and education, exiled the former Sultan, banned Sharia law, mandated the Latin alphabet and Gregorian calendar, enumerated equal rights for women, and introduced Western-style dress and surnames.

After Kemal died in 1938, his successor, Ismet Inonu, maintained single party rule until the country's first democratic election in 1950. In losing the election, Inonu's party peacefully surrendered power to a civilian government that would last until a 1960 military coup seeking to limit the power of Islamists in the government. Military rule was dissolved in 1965 and civilan rule resumed with further "interruptions" in 1971 and from 1980-83.

As Bernard Lewis, the former Princeton Professor and Edward Said's much maligned pinnacle of Orientalist thought, points out, the remarkable thing about Turkey is that three times its military willingly withdrew from power to facilitate the democratic process. Lewis goes on to list several factors contributing to the relative success of democratic rule in Turkey. Among these he includes most pointedly the fact that Turkey is nearly alone among the Islamic nations of Asia and Africa in having never been colonized. In virtually all other cases, democratic systems were either imposed by military conquerors or decreed by departing colonial powers.

Lewis also offers Turkey's proximity to the West and its consequent ability to "get used to" Western style political organization bit by bit and over time. He invokes Ataturk's piecemeal introduction of secular reforms as further proof that "democracy is a strong medicine, which must be administered in small and only gradually increasing doses. Too large and too sudden a dose can kill a patient."

Finally, Lewis cites a unique type of economic development, dating back to the time of the Ottomans but fully developing during the years immediately before Ataturk, as an important component of democratic rule being able to stick in Turkey. "Turkish economic growth," he says, "was not due to resources discovered by others and used by others for purposes invented by others." The rise of a skilled, professional and entrepreneurial middle class, much like that of any capitalist democracy in the West, was essential to the political stability of the nation. When people own things and have permanent possessions, they are less likely to join a revolution, so the theory goes.

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To some extent all of Lewis' explanations leave something lacking. Whether it be because of obvious counter examples (such as the lack of long-standing colonial rule in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria that remain unwilling to institute Turkey-style secular reform) or misguided and biased metaphors (such as democracy as medicine and states as patients), none of Lewis' assertions provide satisfactory explanations of Turkish democracy. And to be sure, no one single factor can explain the historical path of an entire country, least of all one as complex as Turkey.

A more satisfactory explanation, is one that, ironically, Lewis has become reluctant to rely upon since Said held him up as the Anti-hero of the Orientalist establishment. With some very major exceptions (including genocide, ethnically-motivated forced resettlements, and periods of martial law) there has been a tradition of acceptance in the culture of Turkey, and particularly in the government itself.

In the city of Istanbul, there is a museum called the Hagia Sophia. It used to be a mosque, but even before that it was a church. When Mustafa Kemal took power, one of his first acts was to make the Hagia Sophia a museum that proudly displayed both its Christian and Muslim roots. Everyone was welcome in the museum, and neither religious group "owned" it. Kemal's act was not without precedent: during the time of Ottoman rule, the government of the sultans respected the Christian heritage of the Hagia Sophia. Because it is wrong to display the human form in a mosque, the Christian iconography on the walls of the Hagia Sophia was covered up when Muslims took over the city in the 1450s. Yet over the ensuing centuries, the sultans periodically removed the covering plaster, cleaned and maintained the icons and then replaced the coverings. Today some of the icons are visible, while some remain covered.

As we stumble ahead in Iraq, it might do us some good to pay attention to Turkey, not simply as an outsider trying to gain acceptance into our buddies' economic clubhouse, but as a country that is learning how to build a democracy based on the the recognition of a diverse and complex history.

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