"Tension turns into crisis
Leader
Monday April 30, 2007
The Guardian
Turkey's political future is hanging in the balance. The cause of the crisis is the nomination of the foreign minister Abdullah Gul as the country's next president. Mr Gul is a founder of the neo-Islamic AK party, which has a large parliamentary majority and could normally expect to get its nominee elected. On Friday, that prospect provoked the Turkish army to say it viewed Mr Gul's election 'with concern'. The threat that the Turkish military might remove the civilian government, as it has done before, drew warnings from both the AK party and the European Union. Yesterday, more than 300,000 rallied in Istanbul - echoing an equally large protest in Ankara two weeks ago. The Istanbul rally called for three things: no sharia law, no coup d'etat and a fully democratic Turkey. Yet Turkey's ability to keep all three is uncertain."
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