Oxford scholar: "Turkey is a model only for Turkey"

Turkey provides a good example of the evolutionary success of an Islam-oriented government but can't be copied as a model by Mideast countries trying to transition to democracy, according to a prominent academic. "We must look at how much Islamists have evolved in Turkey," Oxford University's Tariq Ramadan said yesterday at the Leaders of Change Summit in Istanbul. "The Turkish political model is [suitable] for Turkey, the Tunisian one is for Tunisia, and so on." In this, there is no real model, Ramadan said, adding that the models of Turkey and other countries could also improve in the name of better democracy. Instead, it is important to recognize that Turkey's success over the last decade shows how Islam can coexist with democracy, he said.