Airborne elephant watch forward

And this one from Turkey, where as you know the dread Islamists have been in power for ten years now, in the form of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi or AKP),  created out of the remnants of the Virtue Party and the Motherland Party. That is, they don't call themselves Islamist (unlike the Virtue element as it was before), but other people are glad to call them

"'Islamic,' 'Islamist,' 'mildly Islamist,' 'Islamic-oriented,' 'Islamic-leaning,' 'Islamic-based' or 'with an Islamic agenda,' and similar language is being used. These characterizations do not reflect the truth, and they sadden us,"

as former education minister Hüseyin Çelik remarked.

So how do they display their dread Islamic credentials? Are they banning alcohol?* Forcing women into purdah?

I'm not saying they're not oppressed, but they're not exactly veiled...

Chopping some of those thieves' hands off? Not exactly. Apparently [jump]

*Are you kidding? Turkey exported $68.4 million in beer alone in 2010—40% of it to Islam-ridden Iraq!

they're competent, which Zach Paikin, writing for the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, views as evidence of just how remarkably sneaky they are:

Many AKP supporters, however, do not view their party as wanting to impose an Islamist character on the state but rather as a nationalist, economically competent party working to assert Turkey's position in the world more strongly. This, in a sense, is the reason why the AKP's Islamist revolution has succeeded. Westerners cheer Turkey's "democratic successes" when in the reality, the AKP's reelection will likely set the Middle East back by half a century.

Turkish Islamists, unlike Iranian Islamists or members of terrorist organizations, have come to power not by the sword nor by massive popular uprisings, but through elections. As a result, their active presence in the public sphere is much more entrenched and legitimate.

So it's a Satanic taqqiya plot to enslave the people with beer, democracy, and economic progress in a remarkably scary climate—the fiends!

Actually they are by no means a perfect government. A wave of jailings of journalists has brought them down to 148th place out of 179 in the Reporters' International Press Freedom Index. And the latest thing, from Morning Edition today, is the reckless development of Istanbul, stuffing the city to almost three times the population it can comfortably hold, looking toward doubling that by 2023, and

a trend that began well before Erdogan — the transformation of open and public spaces in the city into profit-generating commercial properties.

One example is playing out in Istanbul's main Taksim Square, part of which has been a park since the early 1940s. Until World War II, an Ottoman military barracks stood on the spot. The historic building fell into disuse and was demolished to create the park. [Documentary filmmaker Imre] Azem says developers have long coveted this prime property but were blocked by laws protecting the city's green spaces.... Then they hit on the idea, he says, of using Turkey's laws on preserving historic buildings.

"In order to protect this already-demolished building, they're rebuilding it," he says. "They're saying they're preserving it, but it's already gone. They're making a restoration of the old barracks, like an imitation, which will serve as a shopping mall."

Oho, paranoid fear of a free press, putting profits ahead of people—and trees!—using a fake attachment to the past to further their aims? Sounds familiar, but is it Islam? I know, they're conservatives, just as they always said they were!

This is pretty Orientalist, but irresistible.