The man splitting Turkish society

CNN, August, 2007
The man splitting Turkish society

ANKARA, Turkey (Reuters) -- A photograph showing a father's joy at his daughter's graduation would normally go unremarked, but this particular picture -- and the outrage it sparked -- says much about the anxiety some Turks feel about Abdullah Gul.
art.abdullah.gul.afp.gi.jpg

Abdullah Gul confirming he will stand as a candidate for president in a vote by parliament this month.

Gul, Turkey's foreign minister who on Tuesday announced he would run for the presidency, recently attended the ceremony at Ankara's Bilkent University with his daughter Kubra wearing the Muslim headscarf, which is banned in schools and public offices.

The picture was further proof for Turkey's secular elite, including its powerful army generals, that Gul and his ruling AK Party are itching to dismantle the secular state established by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923. Gul strongly rejects such claims.

Now Turks are digesting the strong likelihood that Gul, who served in a cabinet ousted by the army 10 years ago for being too Islamist, will follow in the steps of the revered Ataturk and become Turkey's next president.

But the secularists shudder at the thought of somebody with an Islamist past becoming president and commander in chief of the second largest army in NATO, taking the salute from generals with his headscarfed wife Hayrunisa by his side.

Such symbolism matters hugely in overwhelmingly Muslim but secular Turkey, whose Westernized elite considers public manifestations of piety -- such as the headscarf -- an embarrassing reminder of the country's past backwardness.

But the presidency is about more than symbolism. Although parliament has most power, the president can veto laws once and appoints many top judges and university rectors, pillars of the secular order.

Secularists fear Gul as president would promote Islamist-minded candidates to key positions, gradually undermining Ataturk's strict separation of state and religion.

They recall how Hayrunisa Gul once appealed to the European Court of Human Rights to strike down Turkey's headscarf ban, though she dropped her case when her husband entered politics.

"(With Gul as president) Turkey would be a very different place in five to 10 years' time," Deniz Baykal, leader of the secularist Republican People's Party, said this week.

"Turkey would become a country in which the political balances were changing very fast, in which the Middle East identity would become more pronounced," he said ...

Gul, 56, was born in the central Anatolian city of Kayseri, an industrial hub known for its conservative, pious outlook. He studied economics at Istanbul University and did post-graduate studies in Britain, in London and Exeter.

Gul later worked at the Islamic Development Bank in Saudi Arabia before entering parliament for the Islamist Welfare Party in 1991. He served as minister of state and as spokesman for the government ejected by the generals in 1997.


BBC
Turkish press hesitant over Gul

OZDEMIR INCE IN HURRIYET

Abdullah Gul's election to the Cankaya is against the nature of the secular public sphere. And his wife's headscarf cannot be separated from Abdullah Gul's identity and personality.


IHT

"We can't digest it," Kemal Kilicdaroglu, a member of the Republican People's Party, told private NTV television on Tuesday. "We think someone who has problems with the regime of the Turkish Republic should not sit at the presidential seat." ...

"The nomination of someone who had caused crisis is likely to lead to a new crisis," Demirtas said.

The president is also considered to be the commander in chief of the armed forces and the fiercely secular military had publicly declared its opposition to Gul.

Gul's wife wears an Islamic style head scarf, which many secular Turks regard as a symbol of political Islam and cite as a reason why he should not become president.

If Gul is elected, the next big test would be whether he would take his wife to an important military ceremony on Aug.30. Islamic style head scarves are banned from military clubs and military ceremonies.

Times Online

Abdullah Gul, the Turkish Foreign Minister, has again been nominated as the ruling party’s candidate for president, three months after his last nomination prompted threats from the Army as thousands took to the streets in protest at his Islamist past.

Mr Gul, whose wife’s Muslim head-scarf has outraged the country’s self-styled secular elite, is now almost certain to become President. His Justice and Development Party (AK), fresh from a landslide election win, holds enough MPs for the simple majority required in the three-round parliamentary vote ...

Despite the impression of a secularist-Islamist struggle and the sincere fears of hundreds of thousands of urban antigovernment protesters who took to the streets in May, most people who supported the Government did not come from Islamist backgrounds. Rather, they voted in the belief that the AK sought further reform and had no interest in overturning the separation of mosque and state ...

Guardian

Islamist Again Seeks Turkish Presidency

Turkey's Islamic-oriented ruling party decided Monday to renominate the religious-leaning foreign minister for president, raising the possibility of another showdown with secular factions, including the military.

When Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan proposed Abdullah Gul as his party's candidate earlier this year, opposition groups accused Gul of wanting to scrap the secular traditions of this predominantly Muslim but officially secular nation.

Opposition lawmakers boycotted the previous presidential voting in parliament, leading Turkey's top court to annul the balloting for lack of the required quorum and causing early elections that were won by Erdogan's party last month ...

Gul's earlier nomination alarmed the military-backed, secular establishment, which accused the government of seeking a lock on power so it could impose Islamic ways unchecked.

Although the presidency is largely ceremonial, the post has the power to veto legislative bills and government appointments.

The current president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, has often frustrated Erdogan's government by blocking its initiatives, such as vetoing a newly passed constitutional amendment in June that would have allowed the people - rather than legislators - to elect the president ...

``It is not appropriate to have a president who has problems with the founding philosophy of the Turkish Republic,'' said Deniz Baykal, leader of the main opposition party, the pro-secular Republican People's Party.

Onur Oymen, a senior member of the Republican People's Party, said Gul's candidacy is a serious threat to the secular principles of Turkey. ``Gul's candidacy is not expected to contribute to peace and stability in the country,'' he told private NTV television ...


Earth Times

New Islamist-military showdown over Turkish presidency

... Since winning power in 2002, the AKP government has tried, but failed, to criminalize adultery, push drinking into "red light" alcohol zones and to appoint an Islamist banker as head of the Central Bank.

It has also been unsuccessful in getting its friends into a vast range of state positions thanks to a veto wielded by current President Ahmet Necdet Sezer.

Secularists are also aghast that Gul's wife Hayrunisa wears an Islamic-style headscarf. Until now no wife of a president has worn a headscarf.

President Sezer went as far as to refuse to issue invitations to presidential functions to anyone, including the wives of ministers, wearing the scarf ...

In April, when Erdogan first announced that Gul would run for the presidency, more than a million people took to the streets in cities across Turkey to protest the prospect of Gul becoming Turkey's 11th head of state

The protest marches were organized by retired generals but it was currently serving generals that effectively blocked Gul's first attempt.

"The problem is that the presidential election process is based on arguments over secularism," the army said in a statement released on its website in April.

"It cannot be forgotten that the Turkish Armed Forces are a party to these arguments, and that it is the absolute defender of secularism ... It will display its attitude and action openly and clearly whenever it is necessary."

It was that statement, dubbed by the media as an e-coup, that is widely believed to have convinced the Constitutional Court to annul the presidential election process on the grounds that quorum had not been reached thanks to opposition parties boycotting the vote in parliament.