The emergence of a clutch of newly independent Muslim Turkic states following the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1991 stirred up an intense, if short-lived, interest in the Turkic presence that stretches from the outer edges of China all the way to. the Balkans. At its core lay Turkey whose ready, if wobbly, democracy, its free-market economy and its own brand of moderate Islam, western strategists hoped, could serve as a model.
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