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Turkey’s election
A turning point for Turkey?
Jul 21st 2007 | ANKARA, DIYARBAKIR AND ISTANBUL
>>From Economist.com
Why this weekend’s general election matters for the whole region
AFP
ON JULY 22nd Turkey goes to the polls. The event is being followed
carefully far from its own borders. For one thing, the country is
of great strategic importance. Outsiders are also monitoring one of
the Muslim world’s rare examples of a working democracy. But the
election has been joyless if feverish, marked by huge rallies and
demonstrations. Underlying the tensions is a battle over which way
Turkey will go.
The army, claiming to detect a dangerous slide towards Islamic
radicalism, had threatened to intervene against the government, casting
a pall over the entire campaign. The trigger was the decision by Recep
Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister and leader of the ruling Justice and
Development (AK) Party, to nominate his foreign minister, Abdullah Gul,
to replace President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, who was due to step down on
May 16th. Like Mr Erdogan, Mr Gul once dabbled in political Islam. And
both men’s wives wear the Muslim headscarf, which in accordance with
Ataturk’s secular tradition is banned in all public buildings.
The army, always suspicious of the AK Party because of its Islamist
roots, deemed the prospect a threat to the secular republic.
Meanwhile, millions of secular Turks protested against the
government. The pressure proved too strong: Mr Erdogan withdrew Mr
Gul’s candidacy and called an early general election.
To most Turkish voters the election is a referendum on the AK
Party’s record, which is strikingly good. The effects of AK’s "silent
revolution" are evident everywhere. Largely thanks to constitutional
changes and an improving economy, the European Union agreed to open
membership talks with Turkey in 2005. Many European and American
diplomats agree that Mr Erdogan is the man most fit to lead Turkey.
Their views are shared by millions of Turks, who recall the economic
mismanagement and corruption of the string of secular coalitions that
crippled Turkey before AK.
Indeed, opinion polls suggest that the voters may give AK quite a bit
more than the 34% that catapulted it to single-party rule in 2002. If
it were to win a sufficiently big majority (two-thirds of the 550
parliamentary seats) to change the constitution and force through its
own choice of president, the army might well step in. The president
has considerable power. He can approve the expulsion of overtly pious
officers, and appoints judges and university rectors. He can also
veto legislation deemed to violate the secular constitution. To the
generals, and millions of secular Turks, no AK man can be trusted in
this role.
The generals have other concerns. Among the reforms that earned Turkey
membership talks with the EU were provisions to trim the influence of
the army. But the election of Nicolas Sarkozy as France’s president
is a blow because he is strongly against Turkey’s membership. And the
impasse in Cyprus has become an excuse for all who want to derail
talks. Not surprisingly, popular support in Turkey for the EU has
diminished.
The EU’s focus on issues such as free speech and minority rights has
also helped to feed a dangerous nationalism. This was most chillingly
demonstrated in January when a Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor was
shot dead because he had "insulted the Turks". Renewed nationalism is
also affecting Turkey’s other big foreign-policy issue: northern Iraq.
Kurds in the quasi-independent state in northern Iraq are fearful
about what may happen after the election. The new political landscape
is likely to determine whether the army makes good on its repeated
threats to attack separatist guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers’
Party (PKK) who are based in northern Iraq.
An invasion would destabilise the only fairly calm bit of Iraq and
wreck Turkey’s relations with America and the EU. Worse, it might not
succeed. Mr Erdogan has resisted the army’s calls for a cross-border
incursion, while quietly testing the ground for a "grand bargain".
Turkey would recognise the Iraqi Kurds’ semi-independent status; the
Iraqi Kurds would coax PKK fighters to give up their guns and pledge
to respect Turkey’s borders. Relieved of the pressure of having to
choose between its Turkish and Iraqi Kurdish allies, America would
be delighted, as would Turkey’s own Kurds.
But the generals refuse to play along. They still hope that, after the
election, they will get the nod to stomp into northern Iraq. It is not
only the future of Turkish democracy that is at stake this weekend;
it may be the future of the whole region.