On Friday Vice President Joe Biden offered Turkey’s Islamist government a leading role in the Middle East, despite its recent crackdown on dissidents, expansion of Islamic culture and education, and regional conflicts with Greece and Israel.
“We’re looking for Turkish leadership in the rest of that entire region,” Biden declared at a fundraiser attended by roughly 200 people from the Turkish and Azerbaijani communities, according to a White House pool report.
“It’s a model as to how you can have an Islamic population, an Islamic state and a democracy, something the rest of the region is groping to figure out how to do,” he told the audience, who paid up to $2,500 each to attend the fundraiser.
Since last June Turkey’s Islamist government, led by Recep Erdogan, “has restricted freedom of expression, association, and assembly with laws that allow authorities to jail its critics for many months or years while they stand trial for alleged terrorism offenses on the basis of flimsy evidence,” according to a January report by the left-wing group Human Rights Watch.
The Turkish government’s Islamist policies also clash with Biden’s progressive policies, and with American culture and laws in general.
For example, on April 18 Biden touted the Violence Against Women Act and slammed GOP proposals to upgrade the law.
However, in Turkey, “violence in the home is endemic, and police and courts regularly fail to protect women who have applied for protection orders under the Family Protection Law [and] reports of spouses and family members killing women rose in 2011,” Human Rights Watch reported.
via Joe Biden | Turkey Leadership Role | Islamist Leaders | The Daily Caller.
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