Amid a sea of Turkish flags, nearly three-quarters of a million people poured into the streets of Istanbul on Sunday to demand that parliament choose a president with no Islamist ties.
But the Islamist-rooted ruling party insisted that it would push ahead with the candidacy of Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, chosen last week as its standard-bearer in parliamentary voting scheduled to take place in the coming two weeks.
Secular opposition parties have mounted a legal challenge to a first-round vote last week by lawmakers, and Turkey's powerful military, which considers itself the guardian of this overwhelmingly Muslim country's secular system, issued a sharply worded warning Friday night against the accession of any leader who does not fully support secular principles.
Turkey's military has a long history of intervening in political affairs. It has dislodged four governments in the last half-century, most recently a democratically elected Islamist government that was pushed from power a decade ago.
Gul, a respected diplomat, rejects the Islamist label, and has pledged that he and his party will pursue a conservative-democratic agenda. Sunday's huge rally was organized before Gul was chosen last week as a compromise over the more Islamist-minded Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister.
A similar but smaller rally was held two weeks ago in Ankara, the capital, to protest Erdogan's possible candidacy.
Although Gul is considered a more moderate figure, his selection as president would consolidate the ruling Justice and Development Party's hold on the executive and legislative branches of government.
The presidency has been filled by a secularist since the reign of Turkey's revered founding father, Kemal Ataturk. The president is the titular head of the armed forces, has the right to veto laws and makes key appointments to the judiciary and other posts.
Rally participants said filling the post with anyone from the ruling party would pose a threat to Turkey's separation of religion and state — even though the ruling party, which holds a substantial parliamentary majority, is constitutionally charged with picking the president.
"Turkey is secular and will stay that way!" shouted marchers who overflowed a large square in Istanbul, the country's commercial and cultural center. "Tayyip, take note of our numbers!" others shouted, addressing the prime minister.
Many secularists mistrust Gul because his wife, Hayrunisa, wears a Muslim head scarf.
"That's not what I want for me, or for my daughter," said Gulac Yildiz, a 42-year-old mother clad in jeans and a T-shirt, who marched with her 5-year-old, Elif, hoisted on her shoulders.
The secularists' campaign, however, is fraught with contradictions. Many secular-minded Turks are part of the country's cultural and political elite, and have a strongly Western bent. But the army's influence in events is viewed with considerable concern by the European Union, which Turkey still hopes to join one day.
Marchers, though, brushed aside those worries.
"We don't care what the outside world thinks," said Namik Kancer, a university professor. "What we have to do is save our republic."
It was unclear, too, what demonstrators hoped to achieve by pressuring the government to abandon Gul's candidacy.
If a constitutional court upholds the opposition's objections to an initial round of voting held last week on grounds that not enough lawmakers took part, the government would probably respond by moving up the date of a general election scheduled to be held by November.
The Justice and Development Party, which has presided over dynamic economic growth since taking power in 2003, would almost certainly emerge once again with a parliamentary majority, perhaps even one larger than the one it holds now, polls and analysts say.
The court ruling is expected before a second round of parliamentary voting, which is to take place Wednesday.
Hiç yorum yok:
Yorum Gönder