Word: erdogan
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...That clash came to a head on May 1 when Turkey's Constitutional Court annulled the first round of elections in Parliament that would have made Gul President. Handpicked by his longtime ally Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Gul was ahead in the ballot, but the court, in a ruling that appeared to betray its secularist bias, upheld claims by Turkey's main secularist political party that the balloting was unconstitutional because a quorum wasn't present-no matter that the opposition engineered that shortfall by boycotting the vote, or that at least one President had previously been elected with...
...conservative Muslim voters has been steadily growing, as demonstrated by the AKP's landslide sweep to power in the 2002 elections. Whereas the secular middle class can be found almost exclusively in coastal cities like Istanbul and Izmir, the AKP, led by the former semipro soccer player and Islamist Erdogan, has its roots in the conservative Central Anatolian heartland, as well as among millions of poorer migrants from those areas. Despite secularists' warnings, a poll conducted last year by a leading Istanbul think tank found that only 8.9% of the population would like to see Turkey's legal system based...
...breaking point has come over Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's insistence on nominating his number two, Abdullah Gul, as Turkey's next President. The presidency is a largely symbolic role, but he wields important veto power. With Gul as President, and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) a comfortable majority in parliament, secular Turks fear "it would be the beginning of the end for Turkey as we know it," says commentator Metin Munir. Their concern is that the AKP harbors a secret Islamist agenda, and that without the appropriate checks on their power, they will seek to adopt Sharia...
...secularist backlash has already made itself felt: Gul is his party's second choice for President; for several months it has been assumed that the AKP's nomination would go to current Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose Islamist roots are more pronounced than Gul's, and who is widely distrusted by the Turkish military and secular establishment. At a huge secularist rally last weekend in Ankara, at least 300,000 people turned out to oppose Erdogan's candidacy, some saying they would prefer military rule to him being President. The AKP appears to have noted the warning...
...going to be easy to sort this out. Erdogan's government has pushed through reforms to improve the rights of the Kurdish minority and strengthen civilian control of the military - measures that helped convince the E.U. to open membership talks in the first place. But he seems unwilling to back down on Cyprus. Erdogan has agreed to lift Turkey's restrictions on Greek Cypriot ships and planes only if the E.U. follows through on its promises to ease trade restrictions on the Turkish Cypriot?controlled part of the island...