As dictatorships end in the Arab world, people there are looking for inspiration.

And they're looking to Turkey, a democracy with a population that is 98% Muslim.

Turkey grows more fascinating and important by the day.

It has a growing economy, it straddles Europe and Asia, and it has Greece, Iran, and Syria on its borders.

The shapers of the new Turkey, as it's sometimes called, are drawing on ideals they find in Turkey's past

as the center of the Ottoman Empire.

That lasted 600 years, into the 20th century, and had large Christian and Jewish as well as Muslim populations.

But when it collapsed after World War I, Mustafa Kemal, known as Ataturk, created the Turkish nation state along staunchly secular lines.

I recently visited Istanbul and met with Mustafa Akhil, a Turkish political commentator who also calls himself a freelance Muslim.

He offers a deeper understanding of this new Turkey, and its intersection of democracy and religious devotion.

We have come to a basic living, lived consensus, although cultural wars are going on with some issues.

But I think it's in Turkey, many people accept, the majority accept that.

If people want to wear a headscarf, let them wear it. If they want to wear a mini skirt, let them wear it.

And that is what you see here. You see everything all together.

And actually, by that example, Turkey is now meaningful for the Arabs.

Yes.

There are many Arabs who are coming to Turkey, and they see huge mosques with a lot of attendants, and they see huge bars with a lot of attendants.

And that's what Turkey is, and maybe they want to be like this country now.

I'm Krista Tippet, and this is on being from APM, American Public Media.

Mustafa Akhil writes for several English and Turkish language journals, and also publishes in the West.

He was born in 1972. This was a period of instability, which ended in a military coup, the third since the beginnings of Turkish democracy in the mid-20th century.

Mustafa Akhil's personal story is a kind of prism on some of the change Turkey has undergone in recent decades.

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