Huge crowds of Turks, estimated at up to one million, marched in Istanbul today calling for the resignation of the country’s government. They object to the possibility that Turkey’s parliament could select as president the pro-Muslim Foreign Minister, Abdullah Gul. Demonstrators, in agreement with military leaders, insist that the separation of state and religion must be maintained. The Republic of Turkey has been officially secular since its founding in 1923 by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
The demonstrators waved Turkey’s red flag and carried placards with pictures of Ataturk.
At least 700,000 people marched against Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul's candidacy in Istanbul Sunday, waving the red national flag and invoking Turkey's long secular tradition. Powerful generals hinted they may step in to resolve the deadlock over Gul in parliament, which elects the president. And many Turks are calling for early elections in the hope of replacing the parliament, which is dominated by Gul's pro-Islamic party.
Protesters and the military fear Gul would use the presidency - a post with veto power over legislation - to assist his ally, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in chipping away at the separation of state and religion. For example, secularists want to preserve a ban on Islamic headscarves in government offices and other public places; Gul's wife, Hayrunisa, once appealed to the European Court of Human Rights for the right to wear the scarf to a university.
The present crisis is fueled by two fundamental problems. One is the presidential election system itself, the other is the nature of the dominant political party. Edward Luttwak elucidates.
[T]wo elections — in the wrong order — are destabilizing Turkish politics this year. In the coming days, the parliament is to elect a new president, a powerful position under the Turkish constitution. On Nov. 4, there are to be parliamentary elections.
If the two elections were the other way around — parliament first, president second — the situation would be much less tense, because the president would be elected by a new parliament with a fresh mandate. But the president will be elected by the current parliament, which reflects the exceptional circumstances of 2002, when a major financial crisis and huge corruption scandals devastated the ruling coalition parties, allowing a new party, the Justice and Development Party (AKP), to win 363 seats, dominating the 550-seat parliament.
The AKP had not won 66 per cent of the vote. It only won 34.28 per cent of the vote. But under the Turkish electoral system, only parties that win at least 10 per cent of the vote receive any seats in parliament, and only one other party passed the 10-per-cent threshold, the Republican People's Party (CHP).
So the first cause of tension is that a party that won just 34.28 per cent of the vote in 2002 will choose the president of Turkey until 2014. (The AKP has lost a few parliamentarians, as did the CHP, but still has 354 seats, with 28 now held by small parties formed by defectors).
The much greater cause of tension is the nature of the AKP. It has done nothing revolutionary since it came to power, but is most definitely a revolutionary party because it seeks to transform the very secular Turkish republic into a Sunni Muslim state with Islamic education, Islamic laws and an Islamic foreign policy cooler to the United States and warmer to Iran and Syria, as well as less problematic Muslim countries.
Mr Luttwak argues that Mr Erdogan and the AKP have deceptively covered up their real long-term agenda: Islamisation of both Turkey and Europe.
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UPDATE (1 May): Turkey's highest court has annulled the presidential election.
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