{"id":32095,"date":"2011-04-11T09:10:22","date_gmt":"2011-04-11T06:10:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishforum.com.tr\/en\/content\/?p=32095"},"modified":"2023-04-14T14:00:02","modified_gmt":"2023-04-14T11:00:02","slug":"greg-johnson-istanbul-rally-a-reminder-of-democracys-virtues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2011\/04\/11\/greg-johnson-istanbul-rally-a-reminder-of-democracys-virtues\/","title":{"rendered":"Istanbul rally a reminder of democracy&#8217;s virtues"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-32097\" title=\"johnsongregclr\" src=\"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/johnsongregclr.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"196\" height=\"300\" \/>My ears perked at the first sound of staccato drumbeats as we waited for dinner in Istanbul last month. The rhythmic chant over a bullhorn moved me to my feet on our last night in Turkey. Our already extremely educational vacation in the Muslim nation where East meets West was about to turn eye-opening. A protest was passing by.<\/p>\n<p>The Middle East was not in turmoil when my wife, Diane, and I planned our trip last year. Istanbul would give us a chance, we thought, to observe a place where Islam is the religion of 99.8 percent of the people. With Turkey&#8217;s growing influence in Central Asia and the Middle East, with its so-far successful balance of Islam and secular government and with a dynamic, if developing, economy, we were drawn to learn.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>Greg Johnson&#8217;s columns appear on Wednesdays, Fridays and the second Sunday of each month. Read more on his blog at . E-mail him at jgregjohnson@hotmail.com.<\/p>\n<p>via Greg Johnson: Istanbul rally a reminder of democracy&#8217;s virtues \u00bb Knoxville News Sentinel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My ears perked at the first sound of staccato drumbeats as we waited for dinner in Istanbul last month. The rhythmic chant over a bullhorn moved me to my feet on our last night in Turkey. Our already extremely educational vacation in the Muslim nation where East meets West was about to turn eye-opening. A [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":32097,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[200],"class_list":["post-32095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey","tag-democracy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}