Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged Arab leaders to embrace democracy, human rights, gender equality, and pluralism at a regional meeting, though most attending leaders offered no public response.
Radikal columnist Turker Alkan contends that calls for Arab democratization ring hollow without a simultaneous push for secularism. In his view, a legal and constitutional framework rooted in Islamic law is fundamentally incompatible with democratic governance or genuine gender equality, pointing to inheritance rules, polygamy, and testimony standards under traditional religious interpretations as structural barriers.
Alkan draws on Türkiye's own secular reforms as the model, arguing that the democratic freedoms Erdogan and Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul now champion abroad were made possible only by the secularization Ataturk carried out decades earlier. He notes that some Turkish journalists covering the Gallipoli anniversary conspicuously omitted Ataturk's name, which he attributes to hostility toward his secular legacy.
The columnist points to conditions in Iraq and Iran as cautionary examples of what democracy shaped by religious law can produce, including restrictions on women's working hours and bans on Western cultural content. He concludes that democratic development in Arab societies is possible but will require a slow, difficult spread of pluralist and secular values.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this wire report, first published in March 2006, in its own words.