In other words, the whole focus is on Obama. Indeed, the election that Americans will hold next week will be basically a vote on Obama. Everybody has seen what the Republicans have done in the past eight years and ultimately few have liked it. Sen. McCain, despite all his effort to the contrary, cannot compel most people to think that he does not share the main premises of the Bush Administration. But Sen. Obama is obviously offering something new and raising new hopes. The only question is whether he is capable of turning them into reality.

Change That I do Believe In

There are five more days until the elections. As former Turkish president and political guru, Süleyman Demirel, once said, “Twenty-four hours is a very long period of time in politics.” So, nobody can tell right now who the next president of the United States will be. Yet the polls hint that Obama will have a clear, possibly landslide victory and if that turns out to be the case, most non-Americans in the world, including my humble self, will be happy.

I have many Republican friends and I understand and respect their reservations toward a Democratic candidate. They have issues, such as abortion or gay marriage, which have made them committed Republicans. But what is at stake right now in the world is arguably more important than all of these issues. For decades, the United States has been the leader of the free and democratic world, and the world still needs that source of trust and inspiration. The alternative powers are China and Russia, which are both bastions of autocracy. Yet since the beginning of the Iraq War, the United States has increasingly been perceived as an arrogant and aggressive force. The American dream of “freedom for all” was smashed by images of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, water boarding and rendition. In just five years “America the beautiful” has turned into America the ugly.

In fact, President Bush had the sense to get things right, “If we are an arrogant nation, they will resent us,” he said as early as 2000. “If we are a humble nation, but strong, they will welcome us.” But, for a variety of complicated reasons, things did not go that way.

Now, Obama offers a chance to change all this. It is no accident that he has overwhelming support in the four corners of the world. People want to see a new America and only a new face with a new message can make them believe that this is possible.

Of course, Obama might come to power and fail to realize his promises. But he is definitely worth trying. As Colin Powell has wisely pointed out, his presidency will be an asset not just to restore America’s prestige in the word, but also to overcome the new McCarthyism, the Islamophobic hate campaign that a handful of misinformed Americans are trying to sell to their fellow citizens.

In The Minds of Turks

In Turkey, many people who are informed about U.S. politics sympathize with Obama for similar reasons. Some pundits, such as veteran journalist and opinion maker, Cengiz Çandar, endorsed him months ago. But the McCain campaign has sympathizers as well and most of those people are, with all due respect, either wicked or close-minded.

The wicked are those who have been craving to stir a military or judicial coup in Turkey. When they decided to sell their anti-democratic crusade to the world, the only allies they found were the new McCarthyists in the United States just mentioned. They have been able to convince some, but not all, neoconservatives about the “hidden Islamist agenda” of the governing Justice and Development Party and thus gather some metaphorical firepower from some Washington pundits for their war in Ankara. For those secular-fascist Turks, the Republicans, because of the narrow Islamophobic camp among them, are the strategic choice.

The close-minded fans of McCain on the other hand, are simply concerned about Turkey’s classic foreign policy issues; will the American president use the term “Armenian Genocide” while referring to the events of 1915 and will he support Iraqi Kurds in their aspirations for greater autonomy? In both these issues, these Turks think McCain and his Republicans will be closer to Turkey’s position as they better understand the “strategic importance” of Turkey.

But in fact, whoever comes to power in Washington will get the same briefing from their bureaucrats about Turkey’s importance when these issues come to the fore. It is also not realistic to think that the two candidates will be too different from each other vis-a-vis Turkey. They may well however be different in the way they handle international crises, such as the issue with Iran’s nuclear program and Turkey has seen enough evidence to conclude that a fundamental change is needed in U.S. foreign policy about such matters.

That is why it is time to cross fingers for Obama. I do hope he wins this election and brings a fresh start that the world sorely needs.