Word: turkishly
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...cotton, the type of head scarf favored by strict Muslim women in Turkey typically measures just 1 m square. Yet that small quadrangle of cloth may bring down the nation's government and push its democratic institutions and secular traditions to crisis. On April 29, nearly a million Turkish citizens flooded Istanbul's trendiest downtown district in one of the largest demonstrations the ancient capital has ever seen. The cause of their ire: Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) had named Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, a politician with an Islamist past, to be the next President. More precisely...
...Fears that Turkish democracy is now in jeopardy have been exacerbated by the reappearance of the military as a political player. On April 27, a communiqué on the army's website warned: "The Turkish armed forces is one of the sides in this debate and the absolute defender of secularism. When necessary, [it] will display its stance and attitudes very clearly. No one should doubt that." The message didn't mention Gul by name, but the meaning was clear: the military reserved the right to intervene if Gul became President. Though condemned in all corners of the Turkish press...
...democracy group in Istanbul. "We can't say that now. A society that cannot reach a consensus on its own has a serious problem." Mark Parris, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey and a scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington, echoes his concern, warning that for Turkish democracy the stakes "could not be higher. We're heading into a highly polarizing and divisive campaign in which the outcome is unclear and at the end of which the military may be faced with the same problem as before." Ismet Berkan, editor of the mainstream daily Radikal, puts it more bluntly...
...Even without the ominous prospect of military meddling, the stakes are high indeed. The threat of further political turmoil is already spooking investors, with Turkish shares tumbling 8% on Monday alone. A political impasse threatens to slow or reverse democratic reforms that were under way to meet European Union norms, and could further complicate Turkey's strained relations with Europe. Some E.U. membership negotiations are already on hold, and they are not likely to resume if the government cannot agree on who's in charge. Senior E.U. official Olli Rehn has said Turkey's handling of the crisis will...
...Turkish democracy has always been a complicated and fragile phenomenon. On the one hand, the country's secular traditions date back to founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who mandated in 1923 a strict divide between mosque and state. (He banned the fez, and modeled his constitution on the Swiss Civil Code.) The secular middle class that grew out of that tradition, filling the ranks of the bureaucracy and profiting from its largesse, has dominated Turkey's political and economic landscape for most of the last century. The Turkish army has served as a guarantor of this successful arrangement. The self-appointed...