Word: secularistic
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Voters in Turkey delivered incumbent Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan a resounding victory in elections Sunday, crushing the secularist opposition that sought to topple Erdogan - whose Islamist roots, they fear, pose a threat to the country's secular order...
...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...
...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...
...Secularists may fear for their Western lifestyles, but very devout youngsters, for their part, see in the AKP potential relief from Turkey's remorselessly secularist laws. Mine Karakas, 27, has worn a head scarf since the age of 10 and as a result was prevented from attending university. (Head scarves are banned in public buildings.) She protested the law, picketing the university gates for two years, but eventually gave up. She headed to the U.S. to study instead, but returned after 9/11. She now works for a private foundation that operates Muslim orphanages around the world. For her, the religious...
...irony is that the policies of the Islamic AKP are significantly more pro-Western than those promised by its secularist and nationalist rivals. A coalition of the MHP and the CHP may keep head scarves out of the presidential mansion, but it might also put the brakes on European-inspired democratic and economic policies, jeopardize talks to join the E.U., and lead to a clampdown on Turkey's Kurdish minorities. The AKP, if elected, vows to press ahead with additional requirements of E.U. accession, whether or not the Europeans are willing to let Turkey join. The party also promises...