Fox News: Opinion quotes Rafik Hariri Center Vice President and Director Francis Ricciardone on the impressive strides made towards democratic government processes in the recent Turkish parliamentary elections:
Francis J. Ricciardone, a former US ambassador to Turkey who now heads the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center, agreed, saying that the evolving “strength of Turkish democracy, its institutions of democracy and its civil society” were all encouraging. Fraud-free, well-conducted elections were anything but normal south and east of Turkey, he said. The election monitoring by foreign and private Turkish groups, he added, also reflected the “health of Turkish society.”