The infidel Turk
In the fanatic Islamist mind, there are a thousand reasons to hit Turkey. It begins with history, and the fact that the Ottoman Empire, with its metropolitan centre in Istanbul, was the last thing resembling an universal Muslim caliphate. This fell in the upshot of World War I, the office of the caliph was abolished, and most of the empire was dissolved and distributed among the victorious European powers; but the Ottoman heartland remained independent, becoming transformed into the nation-state of Turkey. Under Ataturk, it was vigorously secularized and Westernized, with most outward signs of its Islamic identity suppressed. The country has ever since wobbled back and forth between military authoritarianism and constitutional democracy. To this day, the Turkish army is recognized as having the right to enforce the constitution against any errant, elected government.
In the rhetoric of Osama bin Laden, and other Islamists, the Ottoman Caliphate is frequently evoked. The theme of Turkish apostasy is also played upon, to Arab audiences with an historical memory of Ottoman imperial rule. In Europe, in the old days, the Ottomans were called the "infidel Turk", and curiously, the same expression is now common in the Arab countries. The fact that Turkey alone, among the Muslim states of the region, gives constitutional protection and legal equality to its Christian and Jewish minorities, is often mentioned as an outrage. A fundamental Islamic principle is the inferior legal status of non-Muslims.
More recent history has confirmed the unhappy relationship between Turks and Arabs. For the first time in its modern history, a consciously Islamic religious party has risen to power in Turkish elections. There was much anxiety about this in the West, but the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has proved faithful to modern Turkish traditions. It continues to apply (hopelessly) for membership in the European Union. It continues to ignore demands for the institution of Sharia law. It continues to belong not only to NATO, but to a special tripartite military alliance with the U.S. and Israel. It governs, as the Hindu religious party in India, just as if it were another secular political party, offering mere sops to its more enthusiastic supporters. It has thus tended to confirm that Turkey is permanently a part of the West, not the East.
http://www.aijac.org.au/updates/Nov-03/241103.html