Glick on Turkey’s turn and the meaning of democracy

Caroline Click has a worth-reading article on how Turkey in both its politics and its foreign relations under Erdogan has changed from a secular, pro-Western country back to an Islamic country, and how our elites fail to see this.

However, in the middle of this interesting piece, she says this:

Erdogan’s softly peddled but remorselessly consolidated Islamism was embraced by senior American officials intent on reducing democracy to a synonym for elections rather than acknowledging that democracy is only meaningful as a system of laws and practices that engender liberal egalitarianism.

Democracy is meaningful ONLY if it leads to “liberal egalitarianism”? The remark strongly suggests that for all her smarts on defense matters and the threatening nature of Islam, Glick is, at bottom, a left-liberal.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 26, 2009 12:42 PM | Send