Word: turkeys
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...Party of Justice and Development (PJD). That 47% turns out to be a curiously recurrent statistic. In 1991, the Algerian Islamic Salvation Front won the first round of elections with 47%, an outcome that plunged the military into panic and the country into a bloody civil war. This July, Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP) was victorious in parliamentary elections, winning 47% of the vote. While the Turkish generals are uneasy with the akp's success, there's no reason to think that its rise will lead to open confrontation or violence with secular forces...
...presidency heralds the start of a new era for Turkey, it's far from clear what that new era is going to hold. "Is this the beginning of a new period of compromise, or the start of secularist-Islamist strife?" wrote columnist Mehmet Ali Birand. A former foreign minister, Gul is widely known as a coalition builder who played a key role in Turkey's European Union membership bid, but his background in political Islam makes him unpalatable to secularists...
...military appears to have accepted his victory, but it signaled yesterday that it could step in if it ever felt Turkey's separation between religion and state was threatened. Armed forces chief General Yasar Buyukanit warned against "centers of evil that systematically try to corrode the secular nature of the Turkish Republic...
...Turkey's secularists remain deeply suspicious. Pointing to Gul and Erdogan's background as formerly hard-line Islamists, they argue that the AKP harbors a secret Islamist agenda. As President, Gul has the power to approve or veto legislation, and secularists fear that he will sign into law any bill passed by Erdogan's government without concern for the separation of religion and politics. They are also infuriated by the fact that his wife Hayrunnisa dons a headscarf - Islamic attire is restricted in government offices under laws that date back to Ataturk?s reforms...
...rides on Gul's shoulders. "He will determine developments. Everything depends on his personality, and the attitude he takes," says Birand. Educated in the U.K., Gul has made a name for himself in recent years as a moderate politician, well-liked by diplomats, who is keenly in favor of Turkey's bid to join the E.U. As long as he maintains that demeanor, his election today could yet mark the decisive end of a turbulent chapter in Turkish politics, not the beginning...