It is customary for the leaders of Turkey’s political parties represented in the parliament to address their members and rant about the burning issues of the day. In that way, yesterday was no exception — but it was extraordinary.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkey's notionally secular republic, stood over a pair of little girls flanking a little boy as they proceeded to recite nationalist poems spiked with heavy dollops of Islam in front of the speaker's podium. Set against the tidal wave of Islamic nationalism engulfing Turkey, there was nothing singularly unusual about that.
