*EPF206 06/29/2004
Bush Sets NATO's Sights on a Free, Democratic Middle East
(President lauds Turkey's democratic, tolerant Muslim society) (690)

By David Anthony Denny
Washington File Staff Writer

Istanbul, Turkey --- President Bush concluded his three-day visit to Turkey by reiterating the theme he has sounded since his arrival: NATO's new purpose is to confront terrorist networks and the outlaw regimes that breed and support them.

Speaking to an audience that included members of parliament, diplomats, distinguished academicians and high-ranking military officers at Galatasaray University June 29, the president said, "Some on both sides of the Atlantic have questioned whether the NATO alliance still has a great purpose. To find that purpose, they only need to open their eyes."

"The dangers are in plain sight," Bush said. "The only question is whether we will confront them, or look away and pay a terrible cost."

He said democratic nations face terrorist networks and outlaw regimes that support and shelter terrorists while seeking weapons of mass destruction, as well as the challenges of corruption, poverty, and disease, "which throw whole nations into chaos and despair -- the conditions in which terrorism can thrive."

That is why, Bush said, NATO has decided to restructure, in order to confront threats outside Europe. NATO is providing security in Afghanistan, has agreed to help train the security forces of Iraq, and now, in Istanbul, is advancing reform in the broader Middle East, "because all people deserve a just government, and because terror is not a tool of the free."

Turkey, the president said, is a nation that has seen the work of terrorists first-hand. But Turkey demonstrates how terrorist violence will be overcome, he said, with courage and resolve to defend "your just and tolerant society."

Bush called Turkey "a strong, secular democracy, a majority Muslim society, and a close ally of free nations." He said it "can depend on the support and friendship of the United States."

He said Turkey belongs in the European Union (EU) because it is a European power, and because its membership would also "prove that Europe is not the exclusive club of a single religion" -- Christianity. He said a democratic Turkey has found that "if justice is the goal, then democracy is the answer."

Bush then turned to the need for democracy in the Middle East. There, he said, some "identify democracy with the worst of Western popular culture, and want no part of it."

"And I assure them, when I speak about the blessings of liberty, coarse videos and crass commercialism are not what I have in mind," Bush said. "There is nothing incompatible between democratic values and high standards of decency."

Bush said that, in democracies, citizens don't have to abandon their faith, but that no democracy can allow the imposition of religious views on others, "because this invites cruelty and arrogance that are foreign to every faith."

Every democracy has its own way of doing things, said the president, but some essentials are universal: freedom of speech, the rule of law, limited governmental power, economic freedom, respect for women, and religious tolerance. "These are the values that honor the dignity of every life, and set free the creative energies that lead to progress," he said.

Democracy brings justice within a society, Bush said, and it leads to greater security among nations. This is because, he explained, free people do not live in endless stagnation, seethe in resentment, lash out in envy, rage, violence, and "cling to every grievance of the past." NATO members once harbored many grievances and animosities among each other, he said, but no longer.

"I believe that freedom is the future of the Middle East," Bush said, "because I believe that freedom is the future of all humanity." Achieving democracy in the broader Middle East "will be a victory shared by all." The transition, he said, "is one of the great and difficult tasks of history. And by our own patience and hard effort, and with confidence in the peoples of the Middle East, we will finish the work that history has given us."

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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