A quick google search indicates there are 100k Turks living in Sweden and 10k Swedes living in Turkey. Turkey´s 2012 population is over 80 million and Sweden´s is 12 million.

As you see everything is relative, "many" in the Swedish context is "few" in the Turkish one. Sweden has never been a favourite destination for Turks. (Just remember the 3 million Turks in Germany).

Many Turks emigrated to Sweden were of Kurdish origin or leftist political asylum seekers. They left the country either using this point as pretext or since some of them were the victims of brutalities. The main reason here is not cultural but political. Sweden was run by governments that would support people with a certain political view.

-Turkey is a country of 75 million people.

-Income is not equally distributed in Turkey.

-For some people, leaving the country is a way out.

-Waiters especially those serving tourists and the high income group get lured to their richer lives.

-Waiters are chosen for their looks and for their cleanliness.

-Many foreign girls find them attractive.

-Some of those women complain of little interest in them in their homelands.

-A fool´s paradise is instantly set up based on these principles: a poor handsome guy and a rich girl (rich here is relative).

-The great distance between the "lovers" turn this into a virtual "courtly love".

-The handsome waiter who had already undergone a cultural shock when he came to the big city in Turkey would like to intensify the experience by moving to a rich foreign city.

-His motives are often material.

-He rarely considers this a true romance.

-He rarely puts his heart into the marriage that may follow this.

-He may have a true lover back home and the whole thing may have been arranged with a certain time table.

-In many cases, they are not very different from prostitutes: voluntary sex workers.

-Many a Turk would never want to live in a country like Sweden or Finland: too cold, too dull and too diplomatic to their taste.

-I don´t think Turks and Swedes are culturally compatible with each other either.

-A strong catalyst is often needed: good looks, physical fondness, love or money. (Although this is kind of true for all relations.)

Of course, any discussion involving opposing sides must be based on impartiality rather than fanatism. I could sing praises of the West for hours. We all owe a great deal for the eminent scientists, philosophers and men of letters the West contributed to humanity. I have learned a lot from them and many of them are my personal heroes.

Let us remember Yin and Yang the famous Chinese symbol that represents the unity of opposing poles and the constant transformation between them. The situation between the West and the East is very much like that. The East and the West are actually the same thing, they are one. They mutually influence each other.

I love the West. I can´t imagine a world without them. If it weren´t for the perpetual competition between these two, we could never get to the point where we are now. We must both be against hatred. What I am trying to do is to criticize the obvious misdeeds of both parties.

In case our starting point is the age of a country, we must remember Turkey is a much older country compared to the US. However, we must also note that the US shares the sociocultural wealth of the European continent. That also means the US and Europe have been in the same bandwagon since the beginning. Therefore, to understand the evolution of the regime in the US, we must study the near history of Europe.

Over the decades, many regimes were tested in Europe. From the Holy State Model of the medieval times to the fascist regime of Franco in Spain or the National Socialism of the Hitler era along with communism and social democracy they flourished and failed on the European soil. Its this diversity and openness for a change that made the creation of the US possible. The US was a new ideal invested in a land with vast opportunities that could support a new system.

How did Europe get to that point? All this relentless change and striving for a better and more efficient formation was not without a reason. Europe was threatened by Turkey. Turkey had better armies and a stronger economy then. The entire Sea of Mediterranean was controlled by the Ottoman fleet. Traditional trade routes were also controlled by the Turks. Europe had to do something to get rid of the Turks and they discovered America while trying to find a new way to reach India. Colonism, slavery, exploitation of the resources of the new-found-land gave Europe and edge over their archrivals. They had more money, larger armies (reinforced by their colonies). The efforts they made to reach, control and govern these new lands caused them to excel in creating new technologies. (larger distances created a need for steam vehicles, better built vessels etc.).

To put it in a nutshell, whoever has the power has the last word about what democracy is and the West is doing exactly that. If Turkey emerged victorious from this long battle we would be talking about a different kind of social structure hence democracy.

As for Americans having golden hearts. I have no objections since I have nothing against the man in the street. Nevertheless, if we should more correctly judge nations by their political decisions we must say, a country that resorted to mass-destruction weapons twice in its near history indiscriminately murdering tens of thousands of innocent civilians including babies, mothers and children can hardly be called a good one. Whoever did and whoever endorsed that were war criminals, and they certainly deserve to go to hell.

From the political point of view, Turkey is not a stable country. No matter who wins the elections and regardless of the percentage, a sizeable portion of the population detest the resulting government and do their best to undermine it and it is often vice versa.

Being inflicted with such problems, it can´t be said Turkey pleases majority of its citizens let alone provide democracy for them. As you say, there is always room for further development and that is very much the case for Turkey too.

Furthermore, Turkey is at the cross-roads of civilizations. It is neither completely East nor is it West. That means Turks have a slightly different concept of democracy while being quite familiar with the notions of their Eastern and Western neighbors. What is democratic for a Turk may not be that way for a foreigner. Just like a nun may think she is liberated by devoting herself to God. Democracy is a belief. It may come in different shapes. You may like the system in America but we all know that there are countless people all around the world who consider it an evil empire.

Think of the football clubs and their fancy signings, large budgets and coaches with their magical plans for reaching the next league title: what looks good on paper is rarely good enough to actually get success in real life. We can project this onto how society is ruled by parties and how systems or regimes rarely live up to the expectations of the masses.

Leonard Cohen, a singer-philosopher puts it this way:

quote

Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on.

It´s coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and of the worst.

unquote

Perhaps there is a seed of truth in this. Unless, democracy comes to a mighty countrly like the US first, there is little chance for the others to move a finger to change their regimes. One way to achieve this is to question our understanding of democracy and this has to be done on a very large scale and meticulously.

The moment when we realize there is no secularism nor democracy in the true sense of the word, we will have a chance to aspire a better regime that at least makes more justice to the word: democracy.

One of the problems of the "civilized" part of the world today is the wide-spreaded procrastination stemming from their incorrectly considering themselves as the "norm" and the unnecessary satisfaction with a so-called efficient society that relies on the inefficiencies of others. This is about to change.

In a world climate where people talk about a clash of civilizations, we can´t talk about the existence of religious peace in any country in the world. That also means not much has changed over the decades and that things are even getting worse compared to the past.

I am not a fan of conspiracy theories but here is my understanding of what lies in the background of the incidents in Ankara:

The powers-that-be consider Turkey as a considerable military power in the region. Despite all its pro-West attitude, Turkey is considered a bit volatile and unpredictable. The country supports a large population having extremely diversified ethnic backgrounds. Turkey is a unitarian country and has a militarist outlook. No matter what political flavour its young generation choose, a large percentage of them are still very patriotic people.

Turks have certain icons and they defend them ardently. These icons can be considered as a bond that holds the masses together and they are the ones found in established countries like France, Italy, Spain etc. While it is OK for the aforementioned countries have these bonds (since they are Christian and Western) it is not OK to have such a strong unitarian regime in a region where powers-that-be would like to hold the reins by stirring trouble as they did in Iraq, Syria and Libya.

If a political group can be installed in the community using an element (religion) that is not alien to the natural texture of the community, and if they are given enough power they can serve the common targets and do their best to undermine the established obstacles to terminate the unwanted regime and to replace it with a softer, calmer and less resistant one.

Once this step is achieved, more daring plans can eventually be tried.

Matter all around us routinely reaches the speed of light. This happens when a particle is sufficiently energized to release energy in the form of photons.

Remarkably, religion is a respectable way of wasting one´s and inevitably others people´s valuable time.

Come up with any valid argument that religion has a word or two to say about and you are contested, protested and instantly detested. 

Any dialogue that involves God is doomed for failure unless the parties share the same belief.