Word: kemal
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...resounding 47% of the vote. Erdogan then pushed ahead with Gul's nomination, despite calls to name a more centrist candidate to stand for a position which is not particularly powerful but carries tremendous symbolic weight because it was once held by the country's Westernizing nation builder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk...
...will work to protect the vision of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk [the staunchly secular founder of modern Turkey]," Gul said. "It is the duty of the president to protect democracy and secularism." Some liberal commentators are supporting his candidacy as a reproach to the military for intervening too vocally in May. But the hard-line secularist Republican People's Party, or CHP, reacted harshly. Its leader, Deniz Baykal, denounced his nomination as a threat to the "peace and stability of this country." He told a Turkish newspaper, "If Gul is elected, Turkey's political balances will change . Turkey will be transformed...
...strategy appeared to have paid off. His party far outdistanced the main secularist opposition People's Republican Party (CHP), which trailed with 20% of the vote. It was a shattering defeat for the party, which had urged voters to defend the secular political system established in 1923 by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk against what they claim is the political Islam of Erdogan and his party...
...found hunched over a conference table in a cramped and sweaty office in Istanbul's hectic Kadikoy district, toiling late into the summer night writing blogs, collecting Web clippings and organizing marches. When he finds time for a book, it's the writings of Turkey's revered founder Kemal Ataturk, not Dan Brown. "I could have been starting my career," he says with a wry smile. "Instead, I am doing this...
...officials acknowledge their roots in Islamist parties. But they insist that they have changed, and 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...