Plum Crazy

Call me bitchy and cynical, but my experience with the US media tells me they only have the attention span for one story at a time. And Turkey isn't on their radar screen because a) they have to devote two or three whole days to the election since they spent most of the time on what Mark Steyn termed "sniperthon"; and b)no one from the administration has spun how a secular Islamic state (Turkey) will be different from another secular Islamic state (Iraq), since they've spent a lot of time and effort blurring the lines between a secular Islamic state (Iraq) and a fundamentalist Islamic terrorist group (al-qaeda).

Yes, most of the U.S. news media would rather give us puff pieces rather than provide us with actual information. Heaven forfend we should understand how events in other countries might actually effect us. I imagine many Americans don't even grasp that basic fact anyway. "Turkey? Yeah, I eat that for lunch with mustard."

How can we possibly understand the significance of the Turkish election when we eat it with mustard? Mayonnaise, mayonnaise!

In a more serious vein; do the Europeans understand its significance?

I think the Europeans are much more cognizant of it than we are. Valery Giscard D'Estaing recently said that allowing Turkey entry into the EU would be the death of it. I don't think they're getting in this time.