August 28, 2007
Turkey Gets First Ex-Islamist President
Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul received the simple majority of votes he needed to finalize his election, making him the first Turkish president with an Islamist background.
Gul, of the ruling AKP party, won 339 of 550 votes in a third round of parliamentary balloting. His win brings to a close a tension-filled election, in which Turkey's military threatened a coup in order to uphold the overwhelmingly Muslim country's secularist constitution.
Strains between Turkey's secularists and those who backed Gul's candidacy remain. With Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan still in office, AKP now controls Turkey's highest offices as well as Parliament. Gul, a devout Muslim, has promised that his associations with political Islam are in the past, and AKP remains popular for shepherding an unprecedented economic boom.
A coup would certainly threaten Turkey's evolution into an economic power and EU member state. Still, on Monday, the head of the military accused Gul et al. of trying to radicalize the country.
"Our nation has been watching the behavior of those separatists who can't embrace Turkey's unitary nature and centers of evil that systematically try to corrode the secular nature of the Turkish Republic," Gen. Yasar Buyukanit wrote on the military's Web site. "Nefarious plans to ruin Turkey's secular and democratic nature emerge in different forms everyday. The military will, just as it has so far, keep its determination to guard social, democratic and secular Turkey."
The international community doesn't seem to share the military's concerns. Erdogan's rule has mainly been blemished by a shoddy record on human rights, criminalization of speech, and an unwillingness to recognize the Armenian genocide of the early 20th century. The EU is pressuring Erdogan on those points as Turkey lobbies for EU membership.
The London Guardian and the Financial Times have coverage of the final round of voting, and the New York Times has a profile of Gul. Bloomberg News has a story on Turkey's booming economic growth and some of the hurdles it faces.
