Whatever his faults, Erdogan has tried to walk down the white line in the middle of the road; his first major humiliation was his (mostly unexpected) inability to deliver a favorable vote on the use of Turkish bases for the US-led liberation of Iraq. The Muzzie fundies want to drag him and Turkey their way, and a very large part of the country (including most of the military) does not want to go. Since he couldn’t count on his supposed supporters and coreligionists when it counted, and since the rest of the country didn’t vote for him in the first place, the past couple of years has seen a shift toward the view that his party won’t hold on to power.
This business with the EU opposing the intervention of the Turkish military is analogous (but not identical) to the situation where Carter (or Europe) didn’t lift a finger to keep the Shah in power. His toppling was the tipping point for the Middle East. There are three possible outcomes, IMHO: one, that the fundies will take over everywhere (apart from Israel); two, that the fundies will be smashed by US forces and/or their own internal internecine conflicts, ushering in a return to a containment mode; or three, the annihilation of Islam. I think two is best in the short term, provided it leads to number three. Number one is unacceptable, because the long term of that is world domination.
The main problem with Islamic fundamentalists occurs when they have access to state money. The Sunni camp with their fundamentalist wahabbis in the cleptocracy Saudi Arabia and the Shias in the Iranian theocrazy. The Iranians are not happy with the present administration, and if there is a change Iran will return to the secular world. The problem with Saudi is deeper, a regime change there will probably produce a more backward wahhabi administration. But we need to deal with the Saudi export of madrassas and mosques sooner than later.