From Soner Cagaptay and David Pollock, Newsweek:  Turkey is heading toward a European model, but it is neither modern nor liberal. It is the East European model of the 1940s, when communist parties took power in democratic elections, only to subvert democracy and veil their nations behind the Iron Curtain. After the Czechoslovak Communist Party won the 1946 elections, it quickly undermined one of Eastern Europe’s most progressive democracies. By 1948 the communists had quieted all opposition by various means, including the infamous defenstration of a top moderate politician in Prague. Within two years Czechoslovakia had joined the communist bloc. The rise of an illiberal party that would radically change its country’s foreign policy would foreshadow AKP’s conduct decades later. This is not to equate communism with Islamism; rather, both movements, rooted in an illiberal ideology, see democracy as a means to an end and espouse a Manichaean, us vs. them mentality. …

The AKP’s early anti-Western rhetoric signaled hidden foreign-policy goals that are now coming to light. After weakening democratic checks and balances—by imposing tax fines on the media and wiretaps on opponents to stifle dissent—the AKP feels comfortable enough to in power match its foreign policy to its rhetoric. It will continue to face away from the West, even if it ostensibly remains in NATO. The AKP will continue to defend Islamist leaders—from Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir to Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—against the demands of the international community. Domestically, the AKP will continue to trample on free media, gender equality, and democratic safeguards such as an independent judiciary. …