As a longtime subscriber to Newsweek, I have valued your mixture of news and opinion pieces. It is getting harder, however, to tell the difference.
Case in point, the article by Soner Cagaptay in the March 8 issue, entitled “Turkey’s Turning Point.” It appears in the “Scope” section, which describes itself as “News, Scoops, and the Globe at a Glance.” It does not serve your readers well to label in that way a biased and conspiracy theory laden diatribe against the Gulen Movement and Turkey’s current governing party.
Soner Cagaptay is a reputable historian of Turkey. I doubt, however, that he would describe himself as an objective and dispassionate observer of current Turkish politics. He represents a particular point of view which is at odds with the trends of the last two decades, at least, of Turkish public opinion. Since the United States and Turkey share many strategic interests in a critical part of the world, I hope that Newsweek will in the future provide either more objective or more diverse coverage of Turkish politics. Sincerely,David L. Mack
US Ambassador (retired)
Middle East Institute Washington, DC
