NYT writes on Turkey's leadership

In the course of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's visit to New York, the New York Times daily wrote in its editorial that Erdogan's Arab Spring tour "demonstrated the good and the bad of his increasingly confident leadership." The editorial wrote that during his visits, Erdogan "made a strong and very welcome case that Islam and democracy are compatible" but that "Erdogan's increasingly shrill denunciations of Israel are a danger to the region as well as to Turkey" and he has "dangerously upped the ante — and put the United States, a NATO ally, in a particularly difficult spot — with his threat to send warships into the Mediterranean Sea to escort Turkish shipping." The editorial added that Erdogan said during his visit to Tunis that Turkey is 99 percent Muslim, yet it is a democratic secular state where all religions are equal. "There is a lot about Turkey that deserves to be emulated. Over the last nine years, Mr. Erdogan's party has unleashed the energies of Turkey's entrepreneurs, asserted civilian control of the once-dominant army and enacted human rights reforms. He also has a worrying authoritarian side and important choices to make as Turkey moves to replace its army-drafted Constitution with one that is fully democratic. Mr. Erdogan is playing a particularly dangerous game with Israel. There is no question that dealing with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel can be frustrating. Turkey downgraded relations after Israel rejected a sound, American-mediated deal to close the book on Israel's ill-fated assault on a Gaza aid flotilla that killed eight Turks and one Turkish-American," wrote the editorial, adding that Erdogan, as the leader of a major Muslim democracy, can legitimately claim a leadership role but that he should do this so responsibly."