Tyrkiet har længe været et figenblad for de der advokerede for det uproblematiske at kombinere islam med frihed og fremdrift. David P Goldman tegner (igen) i Pajamas Media et dystert billede af Tyrkiets situation, der er langt fra den succeshistorie, som de fleste medier og politikere ellers har fortalt i et forsøg påp at smidske Tyrkiet ind over grænsen til EU.

Two years ago I predicted a Turkish economic crash. Erdogan’s much-vaunted economic miracle stemmed mainly from vast credit expansion to fuel an import boom, leaving the country with a current account deficit of 7 % of GDP (about the same as Greece before it went bankrupt) and a mushrooming pile of short-term foreign debt. The Gulf states kept financing Erdogan’s import bill, evidently because they wanted to keep a Sunni power in business as a counterweight to Iran; perhaps they have tired of Turkey’s double-dealing with the Persians. And credulous investors kept piling into Turkish stocks.

I reiterated my warning that Turkey would unravel at regular intervals, for example here.

No more. Turkey is a mediocre economy at best with a poorly educated workforce, no high-tech capacity, and shrinking markets in depressed Europe and the unstable Arab world. Its future might well be as an economic tributary of China, as the “New Silk Road” extends high-speed rail lines to the Bosporus.

For the past ten years we have heard ad nauseum about the “Turkish model” of “Muslim democracy.” The George W. Bush administration courted Erdogan even before he became prime minister, and Obama went out of his way to make Erdogan his principal pal in foreign policy. I have been ridiculing this notion for years, for example in this 2010 essay for Tablet.

The whole notion was flawed from top to bottom. Turkey was not in line to become an economic power of any kind: it lacked the people and skills to do anything better than medium-tech manufacturing. Its Islamists never were democrats. Worst of all, its demographics are as bad as Europe’s. Ethnic Turks have a fertility rate close to 1.5 children per family, while the Kurdish minority is having 4 children per family. Within a generation half of Turkey’s young men will come from families where Kurdish is the first language.

(…)

Now that Turkey is coming unstuck, along with Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, we should conclude that the entire project of bringing stability to the Muslim world was a hookah-dream to begin with. Except for the state of Israel and a couple of Sunni monarchies that survive by dint of their oil wealth, we are witnessing the unraveling of the Middle East. The best we can do is to insulate ourselves from the spillover effect.

Goldman har i øvrigt et godt øje til den muslimske verdens generelt faldende fødselstal.

He gets right to the task in the first chapter:” The Closing of the Muslim Womb” with the disclosure that “The Muslim world is on the brink of the fastest population decline in recorded history.” The media, particularly during the period of Arab uprisings has shown hundreds of thousands of Muslims in their mid- twenties.  However, this generation of people who grew up with six or seven siblings opts for smaller families and does not reproduce, while the graying population grows less productive and more dependent as food production dwindles – a prescription for economic collapse. The Moslem world is not alone in this scenario. Europe, both Western and Eastern face similar falling population rates and the same consequences. Goldman predicts that by the end of this century population collapse will affect the entire industrial world.

Islamic culture, Goldman states, has been singularly unsuccessful during the past seven centuries. The Muslim world, according to the author, suffers from a greater loss of traditional values and culture among the young generation where drug addiction and prostitution are more endemic than in Western nations. Furthermore, modern Islam does not promote success in science, art, philosophy or democracy, those institutions which sustain civilization and culture.

Skønt det kan være svært at glæde sig over så lange fremtidsudsigter når truslen synes så presserende, så fortæller de stærkt faldende fødselstal om en islamisk identitetskrise, hvis konsekvenser måske ikke er generationer ude i fremtiden.