Word: secularization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Rather than being defeated by the U.S.-led war on terrorism, Islamic militants seem to be methodically widening their holy war against the U.S. and its allies. Turkey made an obvious target. Even under the current Islamic-party government, democratic Turkey has remained staunchly secular and pro-Western. It was the first Muslim nation to recognize Israel, and cultivates extensive ties with the Jewish state. Long a faithful U.S. ally and member of NATO, Turkey aspires to join the European Union. Although its populace bitterly opposed the war in Iraq and its Parliament refused to let the U.S. deploy soldiers...
...methods, will make it difficult for militants who are thought to have used Turkey as a transfer point for personnel and money flowing between Europe and the Middle East. The Islamist-leaning party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is under intense pressure from Turkey's political opposition and secular establishment to prove it can get tough on terrorists. "Turkey," he said, "will be like a fist...
...targets were British served a dual purpose: They sent a defiant message to Prime Minister Tony Blair and President George Bush, meeting in London, that al-Qaeda has survived the U.S.-led onslaught; and they also issue a violent challenge to the status quo in Turkey, a relentlessly secular Muslim state affiliated with NATO and allied with Israel, and in the process of joining the European Union...
...world's anti-American enthusiasms are inspired by an Iraqi insurgency led, on the ground, by mid-level Baathist security force officers supported by local Islamist elements. Bin Laden terrorist ego may be feeling the pressure to show that he and his movement, not the apostate Saddam and his secular nationalist Baathists, are the nemesis of the Americans...
...against Kurdish separatists that ended about four years ago. That war on terror saw human rights abuses that were cited by the European Union as reasons to delay Turkey's membership, and the al-Qaeda aligned insurgents may want to provoke a widespread crackdown and foment hostility between secular military authorities and a civilian political leadership with Islamist roots, in the hope that this could halt Turkey's democratic reform process and delay its accession to the EU. Turkey may have managed to avoid domestic political discord by staying out of the Iraq war, but al-Qaeda...