The "Turkish Model"

The "Turkish Model" of government has been all over the news lately due to the regime changes throughout the Arab world.  Hugh Pope, one of the best contemporary, non-academic writers on Turkey recently wrote a great article talking about the strengths of the Turkish system.  I have been sceptical about the feasibility of transplanting the "Turkish Model" into the Arab world.  There are multiple problems with trying to en masse apply the government of one country to another. In the case of Turkish system specifically, the biggest obstacle to its wide spread adoption in the Arab world is Turkey's official, and strictly enforced, secularity.  Turkish secularism is different from the American concept of the separation of Church (or Mosque) and State, where the government protects religious expression impartially.  Instead, Ataturk borrowed the French take on secularism, called laicite in France and laiklik in Turkey, where the government controls religious expression and prevents it from entering the public space.  When this style of secularism was implemented in Turkey, it was an extreme break with the traditional role of Islam in public life and was only successful because of the untouchable position of Ataturk and the population's inability to mobilize.  Any attempt to implement this kind of wholesale cleansing of Islam from public life would certainly not be tolerated in the Arab Middle East today.
However, viewed in a wider sense, the "Turkish System" is one that other Middle Eastern countries would be wise to emulate.  The Turkish Republic grown and changed since its founding, and largely for the better.  It has become a uniquely Turkish form of democracy that has the support of the vast majority of the population.  Turks want to work within the system, not overthrow it.  Arab countries need to plant the essential elements of a democracy- elections, freedom press and speech, etc.- and to an extent allow them to be amended and shaped by the citizens.  As the example of Turkey illustrates, popularly supported democracies are not created through copy and paste methods, but through organic growth.