Word: gul
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...secular traditions to crisis. On April 29, nearly a million Turkish citizens flooded Istanbul's trendiest downtown district in one of the largest demonstrations the ancient capital has ever seen. The cause of their ire: Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) had named Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, a politician with an Islamist past, to be the next President. More precisely, their outrage focused on a singularly potent piece of symbolism: Gul's wife wears a head scarf. "If it was up to the government we'd all be in head scarves!" shouted Ezgi Kilic, 21, a member...
...annulled the first round of voting for a new President in the Turkish Parliament effectively forced the democratically elected government into early elections. That raised hopes of an imminent resolution to the crisis, which was sparked by secular opposition to the nomination for the presidency of Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, a politician with an Islamist background. The Turkish lira, for example, rebounded on the news after two days of sharp losses. But that vote will not necessarily resolve the standoff between Turkey's Justice and Development Party, or AKP as it is known by its Turkish initials, and Turkey...
...court found that the AKP did not have a quorum in parliament when it attempted to elect Gul to the presidency last week. The judges did not comment on the fact that the secularist opposition party that lodged the petition had, in fact, engineered that shortfall by boycotting the first round. Nor did judges take note that on at least one previous occasion, in the 1980s, a President was elected without the same quorum the court deemed necessary in this instance. (At that time, no one challenged the result.) Still, the judgment has been accepted, and the AKP has called...
...election campaign will likely deepen the divisions over Turkey's political future that emerged following the Gul nomination. If, as some analysts fear, the campaign descends into fear-mongering about a looming Islamist threat, it could do lasting damage to an economy that has until now been performing extremely well. The Turkish army, which helped precipitate the crisis by issuing a widely condemned communique opposing the ruling party's choice for President, apparently hopes that Turkish voters will accept the generals' view that the pro-Islamic AKP poses a threat to Turkish society, and turn them out, or at least...
...bets are off as to what happens next. The powerful generals have come out against Gul's candidacy and the opposition party is seeking court action against Gul based on a constitutional technicality. The resulting uncertainty may prompt the AKP to take the country to early elections as a referendum on its choices. But for Turkey's middle class, at least on Sunday, there was elation. "We have shown the government that we matter." says Isilsu Cinar, a student, in between rounds of dancing. "And we are stronger than they think...