Word: gul
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...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...
...Gul's election - parliament is to vote for a President in the coming weeks - would also give the ruling AKP control of Turkey's three top political posts: the Presidency, the Prime Minister's office and the Speaker of the Parliament. (In parliamentary elections later this year , the AKP is expected to be returned to power, albeit with a reduced mandate). The election to all three top positions of officials who "come from the same Islamic-rooted tree," writes columnist Metin Munir in the leading secularist daily Milliyet, augurs "the end of Turkey as we know it. "Turkey, he warned...
...Such fears may be exaggerated, however, since Turkey's institutions have potent safeguards against the introduction of political Islam. And the powerful Turkish military, self-appointed guardians of the secularist state, stands ready to intervene should those safeguards be breached. (It did so a decade ago by removing Gul's former party from government.) The AKP has so far been reluctant to introduce any changes that might provoke the wrath of the generals. At a rare press conference prior to this week's nomination of Gul, the hawkish army chief Yasar Buyukanit warned that a Turkish President must have secular...
...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...
...Gul's selection removes a key institutional check on his party's agenda, which is likely to increase friction with the military. The choice also represents a broader shift in political power away from the secularist elite in Turkey's coastal cities and towards the conservative Islamic heartland. Gul himself hails from Central Anatolia, the Turkish equivalent of America's Bible Belt. His party's ascendance over the past five years poses a clear challenge not only to the military, but to Turkey's old secular establishment. It's a challenge based on a democratic mandate from the electorate...