Among all the dumb things said about the so-called Arab Spring last year, perhaps the dumbest was the idea that the new democracies of the Arab world might follow the Turkish model. In fact, if you had invested in the Turkish model (that is, in the Turkish stock market) at the outbreak of the Arab revolts, you would have lost about half your money. If you leave your money in Turkey, you probably will lose the rest of it. Turkey is not a model. It is a bubble, and it is bursting, starting with the stock market and national currency… The West still believes in its own ability to fix all the problems of the world, and cannot abide the thought that success is to be found anywhere in the Muslim world (not counting Malaysia and Indonesia). Now that Libya and Yemen are immersed in tribal warfare, Egypt is dissolving into chaos, Syria has dug in for a long sectarian bloodbath, and Iraq prepares for an ethno-confessional civil war, Turkey seems a pillar of stability by comparison. Not for long, if my calculations are correct. I predict that Turkey’s economic crisis will undermine the stability of the Turkish state as well, leaving the Muslim world without a single enclave of stability from the Moroccan-Libyan border (sic) to China’s Xinjiang province.
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(Dr. Benny Peiser)