A turning point for Turkey? Why this weekend's general election matters for the whole region

Jul 21st 2007 | ANKARA, DIYARBAKIR AND ISTANBUL
From Economist.com

ON JULY 22nd Turkey goes to the polls. The event is being followed carefully far from its own borders. For one thing, the country is of great strategic importance. Outsiders are also monitoring one of the Muslim world’s rare examples of a working democracy. But the election has been joyless if feverish, marked by huge rallies and demonstrations. Underlying the tensions is a battle over which way Turkey will go.

The army, claiming to detect a dangerous slide towards Islamic radicalism, had threatened to intervene against the government, casting a pall over the entire campaign. The trigger was the decision by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister and leader of the ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party, to nominate his foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, to replace President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, who was due to step down on May 16th. Like Mr Erdogan, Mr Gul once dabbled in political Islam. And both men’s wives wear the Muslim headscarf, which in accordance with Ataturk’s secular tradition is banned in all public buildings.

The army, always suspicious of the AK Party because of its Islamist roots, deemed the prospect a threat to the secular republic. Meanwhile, millions of secular Turks protested against the government. The pressure proved too strong: Mr Erdogan withdrew Mr Gul’s candidacy and called an early general election.

To most Turkish voters the election is a referendum on the AK Party’s record, which is strikingly good. The effects of AK’s “silent revolution” are evident everywhere. Largely thanks to constitutional changes and an improving economy, the European Union agreed to open membership talks with Turkey in 2005. Many European and American diplomats agree that Mr Erdogan is the man most fit to lead Turkey. Their views are shared by millions of Turks, who recall the economic mismanagement and corruption of the string of secular coalitions that crippled Turkey before AK.

Indeed, opinion polls suggest that the voters may give AK quite a bit more than the 34% that catapulted it to single-party rule in 2002. If it were to win a sufficiently big majority (two-thirds of the 550 parliamentary seats) to change the constitution and force through its own choice of president, the army might well step in. The president has considerable power. He can approve the expulsion of overtly pious officers, and appoints judges and university rectors. He can also veto legislation deemed to violate the secular constitution. To the generals, and millions of secular Turks, no AK man can be trusted in this role.

The generals have other concerns. Among the reforms that earned Turkey membership talks with the EU were provisions to trim the influence of the army. But the election of Nicolas Sarkozy as France’s president is a blow because he is strongly against Turkey’s membership. And the impasse in Cyprus has become an excuse for all who want to derail talks. Not surprisingly, popular support in Turkey for the EU has diminished.

The EU’s focus on issues such as free speech and minority rights has also helped to feed a dangerous nationalism. This was most chillingly demonstrated in January when a Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor was shot dead because he had “insulted the Turks”. Renewed nationalism is also affecting Turkey’s other big foreign-policy issue: northern Iraq.

Kurds in the quasi-independent state in northern Iraq are fearful about what may happen after the election. The new political landscape is likely to determine whether the army makes good on its repeated threats to attack separatist guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) who are based in northern Iraq.

An invasion would destabilise the only fairly calm bit of Iraq and wreck Turkey’s relations with America and the EU. Worse, it might not succeed. Mr Erdogan has resisted the army’s calls for a cross-border incursion, while quietly testing the ground for a “grand bargain”. Turkey would recognise the Iraqi Kurds’ semi-independent status; the Iraqi Kurds would coax PKK fighters to give up their guns and pledge to respect Turkey’s borders. Relieved of the pressure of having to choose between its Turkish and Iraqi Kurdish allies, America would be delighted, as would Turkey’s own Kurds.

But the generals refuse to play along. They still hope that, after the election, they will get the nod to stomp into northern Iraq. It is not only the future of Turkish democracy that is at stake this weekend; it may be the future of the whole region.