Malaysia as a model for Turkey or both a model for other countries? by Hajrudin Somun*

Malaysia as a model for Turkey or both a model for other countries? <br><i>by</i> <b>Hajrudin Somun*</b>

“In the Islamic world, Malaysia is the first after Turkey that has awakened from lethargy and got away from poverty in which countries with Muslim majorities fell into with the colonization era.”
Bearing in mind this sentence is from my own book “Mahathir: The Secret of the Malaysian Success,” which was published in Sarajevo and Kuala Lumpur in 2003, I hope it would not be immodest of me to pose a sensitive question: Is it possible for Malaysia to perhaps be a model country for Turkey, or vice versa, or both, in their own right, for other Muslim countries?
We have just entered the fifth year of this question being raised and revisited on different occasions and by different people. “In the past, they used to say Turkey will become Iran. Once they understood this would not work, they began to look for other ways to undermine the AKP [Justice and Development Party]. And now they say Turkey will become a Malaysia,” said Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in response to a question from an attendee at the Council on Foreign Relations’ conference in New York, in September 2007. Just a year ago, Najib Tun Razak, as the first Malaysian prime minister to visit Turkey in 28 years, emphasized that Malaysia’s system, based on moderate Islam, and as a newly industrialized nation, could be a good model for other, especially Islamic, countries. Speaking at the Conference on Global Movement for Justice, Peace & Dignity in İstanbul, Razak said, “Malaysia has a model that works, much like Turkey.” The Malaysian opposition leader, Anwar Ibrahim, however, expressed hope that Prime Minister Razak would “use his trip to learn from Turkey what might be free media, rule of law and a country that follows the process of democracy.”