Turkey brought to the brink

Supporters of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan listen to his speech at the Ankara airport, Turkey, Sunday, June 9, 2013. In a series of increasingly belligerent speeches to cheering supporters Sunday, TurkeyÕs prime minister launched a verbal attack on the tens of thousands of anti-government protesters who flooded the streets for a 10th day, accusing them of creating an environment of terror.Recep Tayyip Erdogan made the most inflammatory of his speeches as he arrived in the capital, Ankara. Erdogan belittled his opponents, again calling them Òcapulcu,Ó the Turkish word for looters or vandals. He made his speech in Ankara atop an open-top bus, rear, which then drove into the city in a motorcade. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

The competing forces at work within Turkey remind us that even the most successful systems of government can’t escape ‘reckoning’ with fate.

COUNTRIES that are democratic don’t always function in the most “democratic” of ways, especially when their critical fault lines – racial, religious or cultural – are revealed.