Word: islamists
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...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 of Bosphorus University's college basketball...
...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...
...importance, especially for the Turkish military, since one of the President's titles-albeit a ceremonial one-is commander-in-chief. The incumbent President, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, is a staunch secularist who was only too willing to wield his veto power to quash legislation and appointments he deemed too Islamist. As the ruling party, the AKP had a constitutional right to appoint one of its own to replace Sezer, and Erdogan came close to nominating himself for the job. In the end, he bowed out in the face of vigorous opposition from the military and the public, and picked...
...clear how the political stalemate will be resolved. The AKP, sounding a note of defiance, hopes to strengthen its majority to the point where it can vote in Gul on its own. The opposition-and the army-is betting that voters will shy away from the perceived Islamist threat and force a coalition of some sort. Both outcomes are possible. But if the AKP returns to office more powerful than before, the army may feel compelled to act again, this time by taking to the streets. Either way, the campaign is likely to further polarize Turkish society and jeopardize...
...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...