Word: istanbul
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...that has traditionally seen scant need to get involved, these groups have organized dozens of marches that have brought millions onto the streets in cities across the nation. "Our strategies are long-term," says a friend of Koseoglu's, Demir Buyukozkan, 28, at a recent late-night session in Istanbul. "In the next generation, our goal is to be leaders of this country...
...clip, lower inflation and joblessness, and the opening of E.U. membership talks after 40 years of waiting would be a credit to any government. Instead, critics stress the alleged long-term Islamist agenda of the party's leaders. The current e-mail and blogging campaign by the young Istanbul Kemalists, for example, is focusing on claims that leaders like Erdogan and Gul are conservative Muslims who have in the past flirted with political Islam...
...Both leaders were members of the Welfare Party that was banned in 1997 for undermining Turkey's secular regime. Erdogan was imprisoned a few months later for reading, while mayor of Istanbul, a poem that likened minarets to bayonets. "Democracy is like a street car," Erdogan is alleged to have said in one mailing. "You only ride it to get to your destination." The Kemalists' blogs remind skeptics of the Islamic notion of takiye, according to which it is permissible for devout Muslims to dissimulate in order to achieve their goal. The fact that the party has not yet pursued...
...Young secularist women say they are particularly worried. Pinar Ozkan, 23, an events organizer who is a member of the Kemalist Politics Group, says her company recently organized a gathering for several junior AKP officials in Istanbul. When she offered them a tray of tea, she claims, they refused to be served by a woman whose hair was uncovered. "I felt like a second-class citizen," says Ozkan, dressed in gold lamé heels, a miniskirt and white tank top. "As a woman in Turkey, my freedom is very important. We owe that freedom to Ataturk. I will never give...
...that they respect Ataturk's separation of mosque and state. Secularist charges of creeping fundamentalism are just a way to scare voters, they say. "It's a witch hunt," says Ali Kemal Eksioglu, 30, an AKP youth leader who has been working to get out the vote in Kadikoy, Istanbul's largest, wealthiest and most traditionally secularist voting district. "I mean, it's 2007, and they are still asking, 'Why is that woman wearing a head scarf?' It's too much." As he sees it, what his party is really about is "tolerance of different lifestyles and economic stability...