ARSHAD SHAIKH comments on Turkey’s political turmoil caused by the country’s apex court bid to annul the parliamentary election of next president and the military’s resolution to have a ‘secular-in-essence’ president.
Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused his country’s top court of “firing a bullet at democracy” when it annulled the parliamentary election of a new president. Political turmoil was set off when the ruling AK Party decided to field its own candidate for President as the current term of incumbent President Ahmet Necdet Sezer was coming to an end.
Initially, Erdogan was supposed to be a Presidential candidate but a furious uproar from the secular nationalists prompted the AKP to field their foreign minister Abdullah Gul as a compromise candidate. This too did not satisfy the opposition who boycotted parliament and petitioned the court to annul Gul’s candidature. The military in a rare show of strength issued a veiled threat when their top commander General Buyukanit said that the country’s new president must be secular “not just in words, but in essence”. Erdogan responded by calling snap polls and proposing that the Turkish President be directly elected by the people and not by parliament.
The 72 million strong Turkey ranked 17th in terms of GDP is a regional powerhouse that is bursting at the seams for entry into Europe. Born of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire after the first World War, Turkey became a democratic, secular, unitary, constitutional republic under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. However, since the 70’s the Islamists managed to gain political momentum under the leadership of Necmettin Erbakan and his Welfare Party. The AKP descended from Welfare and has been in power since 2002. It is accused of having a hidden Islamist agenda and trying to turn Turkey into an Islamic Republic.