Word: turkeys
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...case has paralyzed Turkey since March, when chief prosecutor Abdurrahman Sarikaya filed an indictment urging that the AKP be banned for anti-secularist activities. The main item of evidence he used to back the claim was a government move earlier this year to lift the ban on female students wearing headscarves at universities. The headscarf issue is almost irrationally divisive - for the pious, it's a matter of religious freedom; for the secularists, it symbolizes a political movement they insist threatens their lifestyle. The government's approach to the issue - introducing the change overnight, with no public debate - was widely...
...Turkey's militant secularism dates back to the 1920s, when Mustafa Kemal Ataturk created a modern nation-state on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. Determined that Turkey's future lay with the West and that modernization was its priority, Ataturk shut down religious schools, abolished the caliphate - Islam's equivalent to the papacy - changed the country's alphabet from Arabic to Roman script and enshrined the separation of mosque and state as a founding principle...
...long line of faith-based parties banned by the courts, only to reemerge in a new guise on the back of a solid base of popular support. Unlike its predecessors, the AKP has steered clear of inflammatory Islamist rhetoric, pursued aggressively liberal economic policies and advocated for Turkey's joining the European Union...
...None of that has mollified secularists. Hard-liners suspect the AKP of secretly wanting to turn Turkey into an Iranian-style theocracy. Moderates dispute that but are concerned about the AKP's failure to recognize religious minorities like the Alevi, its abandonment of plans to draw up a more democratic constitution (currently a holdover from military rule), and its conservative social policies on issues like women's status. It is these worries the government now needs to appease. "With the court case behind us, Turkey now needs to turn to its real agenda," says Alpay. "The Prime Minister needs...
...Turkey can ill afford a repeat of the court saga or continued and potentially explosive polarization; it would seem that Erdogan has little other option. Building broad social consensus may also be his only real guarantee against the secularist old guard, who have stepped in with military coups and judicial decisions against elected governments in the past, and may yet do so again. So while today's verdict was a victory for the government, it was also a warning...