Kurdistan does not count because that is a region of Turkey and Iraq (and a little Iran), not a nation. In any case, the Kurds are largely secularized so they do not count.
Turkey has had three Constitutions in the past eighty years - not exactly stability. It is also a homogeneous Suni population without a significant Shite population. Finally, Turkey does have ethnic strife between Kurds and Turks, which a free and Democratic Iraq could possibly worsen. The Kurd-majority southern Turkey may want to secede and form their own ethnic state. This is a huge problem in Turkey.
And realize that as crummy as Turkey may be, it is by far the most successful of all Muslim democracies. The best you can aspire to. Iraq has none of these advantages. It has a mixed Shiite and Suni population with an ethnic minority of secularized Kurds. To expect Iraq to do as "well: as Turkey is foolish.
"To expect Iraq to do as "well: as Turkey is foolish."
To assume that Iraq will not do as well is moronic on your part.
--as crummy as Turkey may be, it is by far the most successful of all Muslim democracies. The best you can aspire to.--
Does Indonesia not count? There is as much ethnic diversity and strife in that part of the world as in the mideast. The Aceh separatists or the fanatics on Sulawesi are (pound for pound) just as violent as any in Turkey or as the PKK. Yet the country is in the transitional state between military dictatorship and something vaguely approaching a representative republic. Highly corrupt, but so are 95% of the nation-states on Earth.
As for the present, the only reasonable alternative to cutting and running may be the installation of a Shah-like dictator in Iraq. So be it, as long as it is a "smart Shah" that won't have secret police firing into crowds of protesters.
The key is keeping enough strings attached to cause a "soft landing" a decade or two in the future, and not to turn the place over to Sadrists, in the asinine fashion of a Jimmy Carter. That is also the situation confronting the West in Egypt at this time.
--To expect Iraq to do as "well: as Turkey is foolish.--
No sane person on this thread has suggested that. Those appellatives should be reserved for those who deserve them, i.e. the neobuchananite isolationists who offer no positive alternative. That's the whole premise of this thread.