I am commenting on the popular uprising in Turkey because Turkey has two attributes that are of importance to me. First, Turkey has been a secular democracy for nearly 80 years, an island like Israel, in the middle of a desolate religious Arab sea. Second, Turkey has been a growing force in commerce as one would expect from a people who have the same cultural origins as the Japanese.
There is no inherent connection between democracy and commerce as China and Singapore demonstrate. The connection between democracy and commerce is that a truly innovative commercial nation must be democratic. Other nations are then free to copy the innovations, prices and market institutions of the nation that combines democracy and commerce. In this sense, the United States, is the engine of the train of global commerce so long as United States has a political system that does not effectively interfere with the commercial system.
Turkey is an instance where the moral values of commerce have had 80 years to develop in the population. This is a wonderful test to see if those commercial values, as as opposed to the values of a political-moral system, that supports tyranny, can triumph.
It is my contention, that a society with industrial-commercial moral values (diversity, openness, meritocracy) will be less willing, over time, to accept the moral values of politics: (secrecy, autocracy, and hereditary class structures) that PM Erdogan has introduced in Turkey. Values that favor a zero sum society.
We should be watching this closely.