"Reading the Turkish tea leaves
published: Thursday | July 26, 2007
John Rapley
Last weekend's Turkish election delivered a surprising result. Victory by the ruling Islamist party was expected, but its scale - nearly half the electorate voted for the AK Party - caught many observers off guard.
The election was prompted when Turkey's all-powerful military helped to block the Government when, earlier this year, it tried to install an Islamist president. Turkey has a proud secularist tradition, in which the separation between mosque and state mirrors that seen in anti-clerical European countries like France. And the military has long been the ultimate guardian of this tradition, able (and willing) to depose governments of which it disapproves."
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