Word: islam
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Kemalist" legacy launched four coups in response to perceived threats; the latest, characterized as a "soft coup" because tanks did not actually roll in the streets, toppled a forerunner of the AKP, the Welfare Party, in 1997 after it was deemed to be flirting too closely with political Islam...
...members had duped a large number of people out of "huge amounts of money" in raising funds for its operations, including the training of suicide pilots outside the country. The ministry said that the leader of the group, who was not identified, received baya, or allegiance as an Islamic authority, from its members in a secret ceremony at the Kaaba in Mecca, Islam's holiest site...
...Iran insists that it has no intention of pursuing nuclear weapons, which the Supreme Leader has repeatedly denounced as contrary to Islam. Instead, it says, it is simply seeking to build all the capabilities of the nuclear fuel cycle allowed by the Non-Proliferation Treaty. But Western concerns are based on the reality that if it builds all of the capabilities allowed under the NPT, it would, in fact, be able to very quickly assemble a nuclear weapon - hence their insistence that Iran be prevented from enriching uranium...
...President does have the power to veto legislation, and is also considered an important symbol of the Turkish state. That's why the nomination for President this week by Turkey's ruling party of the country's Foreign Minister, Abdullah Gul, has reopened fierce debates about the place of Islam in the ferociously secular Turkish state...
...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...