“Happy is he who calls himself a Turk.”

One of the first things that catches your attention when you drive out of the airport of Diyarbakir, the largest city in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast, is Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s famous phrase engraved on mountain slopes in big white letters.

Bent on building a secular and modern Turkey after World War One, Ataturk carved a united Turkish nation out of the disparate ethnic and religious groups that inhabited the old Ottoman empire — sometimes by forced “Turkification” as was the case with ethnic Kurds.

That once-monolithic nation state is slowly being dented as pluralism becomes an acceptable fact of life in Turkish society.

Turkey’s announcement this week that it is preparing a “democratic opening” for Kurds has raised hopes the EU candidate country might launch bold reforms to end a conflict that has killed 40,000 people and brought pain to many more.

Cynics have been quick to point out the plan, which might include political, cultural and economic measures, is timed to pre-empt a “road map” that jailed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan has said he will announce on Aug. 15.

But regardless of its timing, there is no doubt that Turkey is changing.

Unthinkable only a few years ago, there is talk in Ankara’s corridors of power of a “Kurdish initiative”, an “Alevi initiative”, an “Armenian initiative” and even a “Greek Orthodox initiative”.

Ultra-nationalists and diehard statists are crying treason, fearing the dismemberment of the republic, and have accused the government of selling out Turkey to the European Union and the United States.

Some secular conservatives, always suspicious of a government with roots in political Islam, see change as part of a hidden plot to subvert Turkey’s secular constitution and promote religion in public life.

Many of these changes have been motivated by Ankara’s desire to join the EU and meet membership criteria, such as expanding rights to minorities and more free speech. Critics say the government is using the EU to advance its own agenda, and free the strictures on religious freedoms of Muslims.

But they also respond to demands from an increasingly dynamic, urban and diverse society open to global trends.

Bronze statues of Ataturk still gaze over Turkey decades after they were built but some of his ideals, such as a single Turkish nation using a single language, might be obsolete.

“Turkey belongs to the Turks,” goes another of Ataturk’s commonly cited phrases, but Turks are also more worldly.

The thriving middle class goes on holidays to Europe and other world destinations. News from all corners of the world is broadcast 24 hours a day. This has brought a different understanding toward diversity within its own borders.

The Kurdish, Alevi, Armenian, and Greek Orthodox initiatives reflect the growing pressure Turkey is facing to redefine a straightjacket notion of identity which no longer fits its society, analysts say.

Some newspapers have speculated the government is considering removing open displays of the “Happy is he who calls himself a Turk” slogan in the mainly Kurdish southeast to ease tensions. For years, Turkey’s official ideology had rejected the notion that Kurds were a separate ethnic group and the display of the slogans was seen as an attempt at forced assimilation.

“Turkey still has a long way to go to solve these issues, but the fact that we have moved from the stage of chronic problems to that of initiatives is noted by everyone,” Ibrahim Kalin wrote recently in the pro-government Zaman daily.

What would have happened to Barack Obama if he had been born in Germany?

I had the chance to pose that question to a charismatic young German political leader who is sometimes likened by his supporters to the American President.

Greens party co-chairman Cem Oezdemir, the son of Turkish immigrants, became the first person from an ethnic minority elected to lead a major German party last year — a slogan at the time was “Yes, we Cem“. What might sound rather unspectacular in many industrial countries was actually an epic change in Germany, which until only a decade ago was loath to even acknowledge it was a country of “immigrants” (preferring to call its 7 million foreigners “guest workers”).

So what would have happened to Obama if he had grown up in Germany, a country of 82 million that has 15 million residents with an “immigrant background”?

“I think nowadays Obama would have had great chances for a political career in Germany and pretty much every country in the European Union,” said Oezdemir, a 43-year-old who trained as a teacher before ending up getting picked by the Greens for a seat in parliament in 1994.

Clearly, the tacit message from Oezdemir was that this would not have been the case a decade ago before the country’s archaic citizenship laws were modernised — thanks in part to the efforts of the Greens in power as junior coalition partners with the Social Democrats from 1998 to 2005 — and Germany started to treat its immigrant community as equals rather than “guests” expected to return to their country of origin at some point.

“I’m sure Obama would have ended up in the Greens party if he had grown up in Germany,” added Oezdemir. “And if he were with us here in the Greens I’d be delighted to give him my job as co-chair of the Greens.”

Despite Oezdemir’s rise to the top of the Greens, integration has long been a thorny issue in Germany. Even though there are 2.7 million Turks and 15 million people with an ethnic background, precious few have made it into high-profile jobs in politics, the media or even sport until the last 10 years. TV anchors were until recently almost always blond-haired or blue-eyed. Before the citizenship laws were modernised, the Christian Democrats that ruled for 16 years from 1982 to 1998 repeatedly denied that Germany was a country of immigrants.

As my colleague Madeline Chambers observed here in a post about a savage courtroom murder of a 31-year-old Egyptian mother, it took Chancellor Angela Merkel many days to condemn the killing perpetrated by a German of Russian origin.

Oezdemir said he has a sense that Obama’s victory last year in the United States has given integration efforts an added boost in Germany, where an overwhelming majority of the population supported the Democrat — even if, as he says, Germany has a long way to go. Oezdemir’s own election has also been welcomed across Germany.

“I think it shows there is a yearning in the public to see that people of different origins are well represented in German society — be it business, sport, media or in politics. There’s no longer the resistance there once was. But there are other examples too that show Germany is still not a colour-blind society. For that we’ve still got a long and difficult road ahead of us.”

PHOTO: Germany’s Green Party leaders Claudia Roth and Cem Oezdemir (R) attend their party convention in Berlin May 10, 2009. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

The results of European Parliament election have caused deep concern in European Union candidate Turkey, where gains made by conservatives and some far-right parties have been read as a  clear win by the “No to Turkey” camp” and thus a blow to Ankara’s already troubled EU membership quest.

Trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, Turkish  Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan dismissed the vote as a “futile effort by those who cannot digest Turkey’s enormity and strategic importance”. He said politicians who vilified Turkey to win votes in the short term would be judged by history.

Erdogan was probably referring to anti-immigration parties  that have openly campaigned against predominantly Muslim Turkey’s accession bid, among them the Dutch Freedom Party of  Geert Wilders who promised that Turkey would not join the  union: “Not in 10 years, not in a million years.”

But last week’s results certainly don’t bode well for Erdogan’s European dreams and come as pressure is mounting for Ankara to push ahead with long-delayed reforms.

The European Parliament has no power to make decisions on EU enlargement, but the European Commission is expected to bear in mind how people voted in the election when shaping policy over coming months. The European Parliament also publishes periodic assessments of progress in Turkey and has been critical in the past of Ankara’s record on human rights, freedom of expression and police mistreatment, to name a few areas.

So-called “friends of Turkey” such as Britain’s Gordon Brown, Spain’s Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and Germany’s Social Democrats suffered significant defeats, deepening a sinking feeling in Ankara that it is being left alone to face the wolves.

Meanwhile, the European Commission in December will review its decision to freeze eight of 35 “chapters” — or membership areas — because of Turkey’s refusal to open its ports to Cypriot vessels.

Will France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel — who oppose full membership for Turkey and whose parties did well in the European Parliament vote — press for Turkey’s EU membership to be put on hold?

Are Turkey and the EU heading for a clash?  

    French President Nicolas Sarkozy opens a jack-in-the-box  decorated with the EU flag, a boxing glove springs out and  knocks out the teeth of Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan .

     “No more empty promises to Turkey,” a snickering Sarkozy  says.  The cartoon in daily Milliyet darkly panders to what most  Turks feel these days are the European Union’s true intentions  towards Turkey’s EU quest — no matter how many obstacles thrown  at its wheels Turkey surmounts on the long and winding road to  Brussels, it will ultimately be denied entry at the gates of the  promised land .

    A survey last weekend by Bahcesehir University in Istanbul  showed that 80 percent of Turks believe that even if Ankara  meets all political and economic requirements for EU accession,  the EU will still not accept it as a member.

    The study was published ahead of the June 4-7 European  Parliament vote, in which Turkey’s bid to join the EU has become  an election issue in some EU countries to the chagrin of the  Turks, always sensitive about their self-image in the West .

     Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and Sarkozy of France  have used the campaign trail to reiterate their opposition to  Turkey’s full EU membership, saying Ankara instead should be  given a “privileged partnership”; Sweden’s Foreign Minister Carl  Bildt and his British counterpart David Miliband joined voices  to stress the “strategic interest” of accepting Turkey into the  bloc .

     Election issues can be notoriously short-sighted, but at the  heart of the debate is the very idea of Europe and where it  should draw its borders as it strives to tackle new challenges  such as globalisation, climate change, nuclear proliferation,  energy dependency, the rise of China and other powers or  security .

     Is Turkey — a predominantly Muslim country of 72 million  people with a per capita income of only one-third that of the  27-nation bloc — too poor and too culturally different to fit  into the EU? Do “Little Europeans” from Paris to Berlin, aghast at the  prospect of a EU bordering Iran, Iraq and Syria really want a  fortress and “Christians-only” Europe? Can Europe afford losing Turkey?

     Enlargement-fatigue and a Lisbon Treaty in intensive care  have narrowed politicians’ sights, but the wider question over  the future of Europe will not go away.

     Ankara’s lack of progress in key areas such as clipping the  power of the military and expanding freedom of expression since  accession negotiations began in 2005 has consumed much of the  debate of late. But again, what are four years in a country  which has changed beyond recognition since the 1980s by throwing  open its markets to foreign investors, shattering long-held  taboos and democratically electing former Islamists as president  and prime minister without witnessing a military coup?

     Those who back Ankara’s full membership say Turkey has  enormous benefits for the bloc — it is a secular democracy with  a vibrant market economy, NATO’s second-largest army, a  strategically positioned energy hub between the West and the  East, and a rising regional power with bridges to the Muslim  world .

     Those against it shudder at its sheer size — by 2050  Turkey’s fast growing population will reach 100 million –, are  troubled by its authoritarian ways, awed by its Islamic identity  and horrified at its treatment of minorities and news of honour  killings that feed the view of the “barbarian Turk” .

     Turks insist that joining Europe is the culmination of  founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s drive to modernise the country and say Europe without a city like Istanbul will never fully be Europe.

     Brussels says banning Youtube, prosecuting Nobel laureate  writer Orhan Pamuk for “insulting the Turkish nation” and  meddlesome generals are incompatible with European values of  tolerance, freedom and rule of law .

     In any case, if Turkey is to join Europe — there are more  than 80,000 pages of European laws and regulations before that  happens — it would take decades rather than years. By then both  Europe and Turkey will be quite different from what they are  today. Sarkozy and Merkel will be long gone from the stage .

     History of course carries its weight. After all, Ottoman  Turks stormed twice as conquerors into Europe, hammering at the  very gates of Vienna, and European powers occupied large parts  of today’s Turkey after the collapse of the empire .

     The survey by Bahcesehir University also highlighted Turkey’s own ambivalence toward Europe — aspiring to be a part  of it but harbouring dark suspicions towards it as well .

     Three out of four Turks believe the EU is trying to dismember Turkey and 81 percent believe the bloc’s goal is to spread Christianity. However, 57 percent said they wanted full  EU membership for Turkey .

     But again, can Turkey afford to lose Europe?  

Senior figures from across Austria’s political spectrum have condemned the head of the far-right Freedom Party, Heinz-Christian Strache, over his party’s European election campaign directed against Israel and Turkey.

In an advertisement in the newspaper Kronen Zeitung, Freedom opposes the accession of Turkey and Israel to the European Union. Although Turkey is in EU accession talks, Israel is not.

Heinz-Christian Strache prepares for a TV discussion in Vienna, Sept. 17, 2008. REUTERS/Heinz-Peter Bader (AUSTRIA)

“What is the most distasteful and despicable is the style,” says Ernst Strasser, the conservatives’ candidate in next month’s elections for the European Parliament, referring to Strache’s campaign. “This style is abusive. He vilifies other religions and ethnicities.”

According to Chancellor Werner Faymann, Strache is “a hate monger, a disgrace”.

“It makes absolutely no sense for Israel to be mentioned. Israel is not a candidate for accession. There isn’t even an accession process. The only reason to mention Israel is to serve anti-Semitic prejudices. It is disgraceful.”

Strache, who denies he is preaching hatred, accuses Faymann of being a “rabble-rouser” and abusing his position as chancellor.

The dispute indicates more than just political opportunism in the run-up to the poll, although that is obviously playing a part.

Freedom, which polled 18 percent in September’s national election, has become a hard-right party since former dental technician Strache took the helm in 2005. It has also focused on religion. A recent rally where Strache waved a crucifix drew condemnation from politicians and religious leaders. Another campaign slogan, “The West in Christian hands”, was not well received, either.

The hard-right rhetoric, an eye-catching campaign aimed at the youth vote and dissatisfaction with the centre parties, appears to have given Freedom a boost. However, Strache’s line has at times been a bonus for the more moderate Alliance for Austria’s Future, the party of late far-right leader Joerg Haider, who used to lead Freedom.

A controversial European Union election campaign poster of Austrian far right Freedom party in Vienna May 11, 2009. Posterreads ” The West in Christian hands - Judgement day”. REUTERS/Dominic Ebenbichler

The parties are often lumped together as “Austria’s far right”, such as when they polled almost a third of the vote last year. Together they could make a serious political force — they outpolled the conservatives and were just behind the Social Democrats in September. the Alliance has tried to use the dispute to portray itself as the more mature. “(Freedom) is using the only way to mobilise votes it has,” Alliance’s EU candidate Ewald Stadler says.

Freedom’s popularity has nevertheless affected mainstream policy, with centre parties loath to open up a flank to the far right. The conservatives and Social Democrats have spoken out against the EU asylum directive and oppose lifting labour market restrictions to the eight ex-communist countries that joined the EU in 2004.

This is part of a series of post cards from Reuters reporters from across Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Political risk is set to fall in Turkey if the government plays its cards right

Turkey’s ruling party posted its worst election result since 2002 in March local polls as voters penalised the AK Party and Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan for failing to address a weakening economy, corruption allegations and a perception that the government was losing touch with voters. In a rare move, Erdogan, a tough politician who keeps tight control of levers of power in Turkey, admitted his party had underestimated the global crisis and promised to focus on the economy, including speeding up finalising a deal with the IMF. He also promised to reach out to the opposition over EU reforms. If he sticks to his promises, the economy will begin to improve, but probably not fully until 2010, and political risk will fall.

Unlike some emerging market peers, Turkey is lucky in that it does not face social unrest as a result of the economic slowdown, as the AK Party remains popular, the opposition is weak and labour unions are fragmented.

However, Erdogan’s character is unpredictable and the next test will be how he addresses a planned amendment to the military-inspired constitution. If the AK Party, which has roots in political Islam, fails to engage the opposition we could face another standoff with the secular establishment, including army generals and judges, and return to the political tensions of 2006-2008. Some senior advisers of Erdogan have already forgotten about the election results and are saying ‘what crisis?’ — a worrying sign. Another risk will be how far authorities push an investigation into an alleged coup plot against the government. If the probe appears as a witch hunt against opponents and the military’s name is sullied, the generals may not be able to hold back rebellion among junior ranks.

(Turkey’s Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan addresses a news conference in Hanover April 19, 2009. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke (GERMANY POLITICS))

Dressed in black robes and headcaps, the monks at the ancient Syriac Christian Orthodox monastery of Mor Gabriel in southeast Turkey sat gravely for dinner one recent cold night. Led by their bishop, they said their prayers in Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus, and ate their meal of meat and rice in sepulchral silence, the clinking of forks and spoons resonating in the bare white room.

On the face of it, little has changed in a life of meditation and prayer at the Mor Gabriel Monastery since it was built in AD 397; but the monks feel the cares of a changing Turkey, beyond their walls, weighing upon them. A land dispute between neighbouring villages and Mor Gabriel is threatening the future of one of the world's oldest monasteries, and a Reuters multimedia team had travelled to the remote monastery to cover the row.

Once supper was over, they said prayers again and we filed into an adjacent room, where the monks started conversing about Turkey's rocky path to join the European Union and "Ergenekon", a shadowy group suspected of plotting a coup in a case that has consumed media attention in faraway Ankara and Istanbul. In the words of Saliba Ozmen, the bishop of the city of Mardin, Turkey is changing and even the Syriac monks of southeast Turkey can feel its ripple effects.

The Mor Gabriel row has placed under the spotlight freedom of religion and other rights for non-Muslim minorities. The case also crystallises what many here view as a battle for the soul of modern Turkey -- a clash between the authoritarian and stony Turkish state that emerged after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and an increasingly vibrant, diverse and democratic society striving to rid itself of the strictures of the Kemalist national and world view.

Turkey is overwhelmingly Muslim though its constitution is secular, a "laïcisme à la turque" understood more as the submission of mosque to state. In practice, Turkey's Christians, who include Syriacs, Greek Orthodox, Armenians and Catholics, have long suffered discrimination at the hands of the state.

At the same time, the ruling AK Party, which draws its constituency from the pious Anatolian heartland, has incurred the wrath of the secular establishment for what critics say is a hidden campaign to Islamise the country of 70 million. Recent battles over attempts to lift the Muslim headscarf at universities sparked a debate over public space of religion.

Some speak of the need to reinvent the state as Turkey becomes more democratic with EU-linked reforms. Founder Kemal Ataturk's slogan of "Happy is he who can call himself a Turk" -- which for decades has summoned the notion of a single Turk nationhood -- lives alongside an increasingly assertive Kurdish, Alevi, Armenian and Christian identity.

Bishop Ozmen said he saw no clash between Muslims and Christians in Turkey despite the Mor Gabriel land dispute and a spate of violent attacks against Christians over several years. "Turkey is changing and those who resist change are feeling the pain of change," the soft-spoken Ozmen said at his residence in the monastery of Deyrulzafaran, Saffron Monastery in Arabic. "Multiculturalism is our best guarantee for the future."

(Reuters photos of Mor Gabriel by Umit Bektas)

President-elect Barack Obama has been getting a lot of advice these days on how to deal with Muslims and Islam. He invited it by saying during his campaign that he either wanted to convene a conference with leaders of Muslim countries or deliver a major speech in a Muslim country "to reboot America’s image around the world and also in the Muslim world in particular”. But where? when? why? how? Early this month, I chimed in with a pitch for a speech in Turkey or Indonesia.  Some quite interesting comments have come in since then.

(Photo: Obama image in Jakarta, 25 Oct 2008/Dadang Tri)

Two French academics, Islam expert Olivier Roy and political scientist Justin Vaisse argued in a New York Times op-ed piece on Sunday that Obama's premise of trying to reconcile the West and Islam is flawed:

Such an initiative would reinforce the all-too-accepted but false notion that “Islam” and “the West” are distinct entities with utterly different values. Those who want to promote dialogue and peace between “civilizations” or “cultures” concede at least one crucial point to those who, like Osama bin Laden, promote a clash of civilizations: that separate civilizations do exist. They seek to reverse the polarity, replacing hostility with sympathy, but they are still following Osama bin Laden’s narrative.

Instead, Mr. Obama, the first “post-racial” president, can do better. He can use his power to transform perceptions to the long-term advantage of the United States and become a “post-civilizational” president. The page he should try to turn is not that of a supposed war between America and Islam, but the misconception of a monolithic Islam being the source of the main problems on the planet: terrorism, wars, nuclear proliferation, insurgencies and the like.

Also on Sunday, the Istanbul newspaper Sunday's Zaman ran a piece by sociologist Dogu Ergil who spelled out what he thought "moderate Muslims" expected of Obama.

(Photo: Blue Mosque in Istanbul, 9 Dec 2008/Tan Shung Sin)

Moderate or non-ideological Muslims expect Mr. Obama to support democratic trends in their countries, but not to push them from above using ruling elites that will never adopt a democratic agenda but rather will simply play for time, making only cosmetic changes. This will, in turn, further reinforce the power of autocratic regimes that are threatened by genuine democracy.

Muslim moderates look at religion as a cultural affair, wanting to render it autonomous of politics so that it will be protected from political power and in the same way, preventing it from seeking political power. So they want the Obama administration to press their governments to enact reforms that will pave the way to democratic politics and legal changes that will allow for more individual freedoms. They do not want a hypocritical stance from an America which advocates democracy but supports the most authoritarian regimes in the Arab world for the sake of oil deals and other strategic ends. The Bush administration set a very bad example of paying lip service to democracy, which, in fact, worked as a vehicle to blackmail Arab regimes and served America's strategic interests.

Michael Fullilove at the Brookings Institution made a pitch for an Obama speech in Indonesia in the New York Times while several Moroccan blogs have been running a campaign (including a petition with a long list of reasons) to have him speak there. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, an exiled Egyptian sociologist and human rights who is a visiting professor at Harvard and Indiana universities, made the case for Indonesia or Turkey in the Washington Post.

Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani ambassador in the United States and Britain, has a long list of suggestions for a reformed U.S. policy towards the Muslim world in the Harvard International Review.  The list is fairly extensive, although it would have been even more informative if it had included suggestions for what should change in the Muslim world.

(Photo: Badshahi Mosque in Lahore, Pakistan, 21 Dec 2007/Mohsin Raza)

How Obama manages issues in the Muslim world will determine the success or failure of his foreign policy...

In the Muslim world ... perceptions have been shaped by decades of uneven handed policies and by US double standards that placed the security of Israel and the need for cheap oil above considerations of international law and justice for the Palestinians. In essence, Muslims regard US policies as responsible for the trust gap between the United States and the Islamic world. In the West, opinions concerning the cause for the gap with the Muslim world are more mixed. The most common view attributes this rift in relations not only to US policies but also to factors internal to the Muslim world-- to the weakness and contradictions in those societies and particularly to the democratic deficit, which allows radicals to build support for their cause. This, in fact, inspires the idea that the United States should lead efforts to restructure the Muslim world. Irrespective of the reality, both perspectives urge the need to review and recast US foreign policy.

My vote for the most interesting argument goes to Roy and Vaisse, who ask the basic question of what role religion actually plays in the big issues facing Obama.

The truth is, Islam explains very little. There are as many bloody conflicts outside of regions where Islam has a role as inside them. There are more Muslims living under democracies than autocracies. There is no less or no more economic development in Muslim countries than in their equivalent non-Muslim neighbors. And, more important, there exist as many varieties of Muslims as there are adherents of other religions. This is why Mr. Obama should not give credence to the existence of an Islam that could supposedly be represented by its “leaders”.

(Photo: Olivier Roy, 4 Dec 2007/Charles Platiau)

Who are these leaders that President Obama would convene anyway? If he picks heads of state, he will effectively concede Osama bin Laden’s point that Islam is a political reality. If he picks clerics, he will put himself in the awkward position of implicitly representing Christianity — or maybe secularism. In any case, he would meet only self-appointed representatives, most of them probably coming from the Arab world, where a minority of Muslims live.

Do you think Obama should launch a special initiative aimed at the Muslim world, or, as Roy and Vaisse argue, assert that "American values are universal and do not suffer any kind of double standard, and that they could be shared by atheists, Christians, Muslims and others"?

Now here's an interesting question. The New York Times reports that President-elect Barack Obama wants to make "a major foreign policy speech from an Islamic capital during his first 100 days in office." But from which one? As NYT staffer Helene Cooper explains, it's a question that's fraught with diplomatic, religious and personal complications. After a day of calling around Washington, she found a consensus:

It’s got to be Cairo. Egypt is perfect. It’s certainly Muslim enough, populous enough and relevant enough. It’s an American ally, but there are enough tensions in the relationship that the choice will feel bold. The country has plenty of democracy problems, so Mr. Obama can speak directly to the need for a better democratic model there. It has got the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist organization that has been embraced by a wide spectrum of the Islamic world, including the disenfranchised and the disaffected.

(Photo: Obama image in Jakarta, 25 Oct 2008/Dadang Tri)

That's a diplomatic answer, the kind you'd expect to get inside the Washington Beltway. Let's look at this more from the point of view of religion. If the American president gives a major speech in a Muslim country, it will be seen as an indirect comment on the type of mosque-state relations found in that country. It's not for him as a non-Muslim to endorse a certain type of Islam over another, say Sunni over Shi'ite. But as a politician from a country where church-state relations are a lively issue, one could expect him to ask what message his choice will send concerning the political relationship with religion in the state he chooses.

There is no obvious answer. There are Muslim states with close or distant links to violence in the name of religion, which should rule them out from the start. There are Muslim states that do not respect full equality for women, religious minorities and other groups -- that's a strike against them. Others Muslim states seem stuck in a time warp, or are politically unacceptable because they are not even barely democratic. This is where the diplomats start to see some daylight. But there is also overlapping among these groups, so no model candidate emerges. The world is a complicated place, an insight that should now return to U.S. foreign policy after eight years of denying this reality.

Seen that way, the diplomats Cooper consulted seem too cautious. While there is no ideal candidate, two Muslim countries seem to represent more of what Obama might want to see than Egypt -- Indonesia and Turkey. On Indonesia, Cooper writes "the very fact that Mr. Obama once lived and went to school there would make choosing it seem like cheating." Says who? It's the most populous Muslim nation in the world and it has an Islamist problem that it is fighting better than many others.

Cooper also rules out Turkey because a Turkish diplomat told her his country had no problem with its Islamic identity but it had a secular system. Turkey's certainly not perfect, but isn't it trying more than many other Muslim countries to harmonise its faith, its past and its future in a globalised world?

(Photo: Saudi women pose with Obama cutout in Jeddah, 6 Nov 2008/Susan Baaghil)

So those are my picks. Where do you think Obama should deliver this speech?

The following piece is written by Turkey correspondent Ibon Villelabeitia:

A new and intimate documentary on Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the
venerated soldier-statesman who founded modern Turkey after
World War One, has sparked controversy in this European Union
candidate country at a time of national self-absorption.

“Mustafa”, which opened on Oct. 29 on the 85th anniversary
of the foundation of the republic, has spawned a lively debate
in newspapers and television shows on the merits of the film.

Is it appropriate to depict Turkey’s national hero as a
flawed man who drank heavily and suffered from bouts of
loneliness? Could he be called a dictator? Did he talk about an
autonomous land for the Kurds?

An anti-smoking group has complained that the movie sets a
bad example for the youth because Ataturk is seen smoking one
cigarette after another — 3 1/2 packs a day we are told.

Calls for a boycott from hard-line “Kemalists” have been
mixed with praise for bringing “Ataturk down from a pedestal”.

Westerners visiting or living in Turkey are always mystified
by the almost religious reverence Turks feel for Ataturk, who
laid down the strict secular principles of today’s Turkey.

His peering blue eyes and sage-like composure tower over
everyday life here. Banners and portraits of Ataturk, adorn the
walls of government offices, barbers and kebab stores across
this deeply nationalistic nation.

Our 4-year-old son, born to an American mother and a Basque
father, came home from school the other day with the white-and-
red colours of the Turkish flag painted on his cheeks, a banner
of Ataturk in one of his hands.

- “Who is that gentleman?” I asked.

- “Well, Ataturk the Father of the Turks”, he replied,
dutifully repeating what children here are taught by teachers,
before rushing to the living room to play with his Scooby-Doo
castle.

Personality cult is no exclusive preserve of Turks,
but the omnipresence of Ataturk has no parallels today in any other
European country.

Is Turkey — where profound social changes, EU-inspired
reforms and globalisation are shaking the pillars of Ataturk’s
autocratic state — reassessing the legacy of its founder?

Ataturk is still deeply respected by most Turks, as a visit
to his mausoleum in Ankara shows. Young and old, urban and
rural, covered and uncovered women line up to visit the
Anitkabir in awe — a pilgrimage to a secular Lourdes of sorts,
as a Turkish friend defined it to me.

Ataturk is universally credited for giving women the right
to vote, modernising the education system and removing religion
from public life in order to bring up levels of social and
cultural development on par with Europe.

But the strict tenets of Kemalism — secularism, statism
and nationalism — are under strain 70 years after his death.

A rising and religious-minded middle class from the Anatolian
heartland is moving to positions of power, and with it,
redefining notions of Islam, secularism and individual rights.

Critics say Ataturk has been taken hostage by an entrenched
military, judiciary and state bureaucracy, which have turned his
legacy into dogma to defend the status quo. Those who claim to
defend Ataturk’s legacy more fervently are, ironically, the same
who are blocking his fulfilment of a modern Turkey, they say.

Can Dundar, a 44-year-old film-maker with impeccable republican credentials and who calls himself an Ataturk follower, said his goal was to present a more human Ataturk to better understand his legacy.

“Ataturk said once his greatest achievement was to bring
sovereignty to earth instead of a sovereignty stemming from a
book which is believed to come from the sky, refering to the
Quran,” Dundar said. “I hope this film helps to bring him down
to the earth again.”