The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey
The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey
The battle for leadership of the Muslim world: Turkey plants its flag in Christchurch
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The battle for leadership of the Muslim world: Turkey plants its flag in Christchurch

When Turkish vice-president Fuat Oktay and foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu became this weekend the first high-level foreign government delegation to travel to Christchurch they were doing more than expressing solidarity with New Zealand's grieving Muslim community. Messrs. Oktay and Cavusoglu were planting Turkey's flag far and wide in a global effort to expand beyond the Turkic and former Ottoman world support for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's style of religiously-packaged authoritarian rule, a marriage of Islam and Turkish nationalism.

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