Turkey braces itself before presidential poll

TURKEY: The possibility that Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan will run for president has raised concerns in secular, mainly Muslim…

TURKEY:The possibility that Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan will run for president has raised concerns in secular, mainly Muslim Turkey, writes Nick Birchin Istanbul

Nobody knows yet who the candidates are in Turkey's presidential elections, due to start on April 27th. But the possibility that Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan will stand has struck fear into the hearts of many in this secular, mainly Muslim country.

In charge since 2002, Mr Erdogan has presided over the longest period of economic growth in Turkey's history. It was his government that began negotiations for European Union membership, 40 years after Turkey first knocked on Brussels's door.

But many still harbour doubts about the sincerity of this once fiery Islamist's transformation into a pro-European, Muslim democrat. This is, after all, a man who once said, "thank God I'm for Sharia [ Islamic law]", and who was jailed for reciting a religious poem.

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His party's pro-market policies may have won the respect of financiers at home and abroad. But tax hikes on alcohol, evidence of increasing media censorship and an attempt to criminalise adultery have had even friends worried.

"I have no fixation on becoming president", Mr Erdogan said on Thursday. Few believe him anymore.

"He's reached critical mass", says columnist Cengiz Candar. "Either he goes up, or he sinks away to nothing. If he doesn't stand, he'll be shut out of his own house", political analyst Huseyin Bagci jokes, referring to Mr Erdogan's tough-minded wife Emine.

Should he decide to stand, his victory is assured. In Turkey, it is the parliament that chooses the president, and Mr Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) holds two-thirds of the seats.

A Turkish expert at the Washington Institute in Washington DC, Soner Cagaptay, says five years of AKP rule has undermined not only the Turks' commitment to the West but also "its Siamese twin", Turkish secularism.

A victory for Mr Erdogan could change the country irrevocably. He is probably right about the change. Turkey's president has far fewer powers than his French or American counterparts. But he's also much more than the passive figurehead many take him for.

With powers to veto government candidates for high bureaucratic positions, and appoint judges and university heads, the president is in many ways the gatekeeper of Turkey's secular state.

The question is whether what the present incumbent, former senior judge Ahmet Necdet Sezer, is defending something worth keeping as it is.

For the 100,000 protesters expected to march in Ankara today to protest against Mr Erdogan's presidential campaign, it is, without question.

"I'll be walking for my children", one Istanbul-based businessman says. "I'm going to Ankara to make sure they grow up in a more enlightened Turkey."

For months now the daily Cumhuriyet, flagship of Turkey's secularists, has emblazoned its front page with the words "are you aware of the danger?" The organisers of today's march, meanwhile, are an NGO headed by a retired general and an academic who has been outspoken in calling for a coup against the AKP government.

"This protest is the work of those who want the army in power", stated Turkey's left-leaning Human Rights Association, adding that it would not be attending.

The parliamentary opposition party is encouraging its supporters to go, but few political parties have openly associated themselves with the march.

For political scientist Ali Carkoglu, those marching are supporters of a dying, hardcore secularist establishment which has a "very peculiar outlook on the world."

"They are like the teacher in the Pink Floyd album my son listens to who punishes his students without understanding them", he says. "Many see headscarves [ worn among others by Mr Erdogan's wife Emine] as a disease to be removed surgically if necessary." Joint organiser of a Turkey-wide survey into religious sentiment last summer, he agrees that Turkey is becoming a country where religion is more visible, in part at least because people talk about their religious beliefs more openly.

But Carkoglu's real worry is not that Turkey is on the verge of becoming Iran, as some hardline secularists continue to insist. What roils him, like other analysts, is that the extremism of the secularist opposition to Mr Erdogan's candidature has drowned out valid concerns about the coming elections.

Turkey has a long history of ruling parties interpreting their control of parliament as a popular mandate to ignore democratic checks and balances.

An AKP victory in parliamentary elections later this year would give the party full control over the executive and the legislature, as well as the ability to influence the judiciary and the media. "Like a single party state", says Soner Cagaptay. "Turkey can only truly progress when its [ secularist] modernists modernise", agrees Carkoglu.