Tunisia and Morocco have improved their standards of democracy and positively responded to the demands of their people throughout the Arab Spring.

The Turkish people not only elected Erdogan, but they also voted against the founding ideology of the Republic.

Now with the World Cup frenzy in the world, and for the first time at this level in the U.S., Americans are one more time discovering the near-universality of soccer and also the feeling of fully participating in "a World Cup" along the other nations.

One year has passed since the Gezi Park protests, which began on May 31, 2013 and rapidly evolved into a wave of mass demonstrations and died down after approximately two weeks.

Politics in Turkey has been in normalization process in which different demands and identities come forward and the invisible becomes visible since 2002

The Gulen movement will be isolated from other Islamic groups as long as it breaks the Sunni codes. The accusations against it of acting against Turkey’s national interests and joining an international alliance will also continue.

The West still does not trust the political actors holding Islamic traditions in the Middle East, and it does not know how to interact with them effectively.

In fact, the evidence suggests the contrary and that it is the Muslim democrats in the current government who initiated direct talks with the Kurds, the Alevis and the Roma people in Turkey for the first time in the Republic's history.