ISTANBUL, May 19: Turkey’s military, guardian of the secular state, has called on Turks to keep up their protests in defence of secularism after a suspected gunman shot dead a judge.
The military, which has intervened in domestic politics in the past, made its call after protests on Thursday against the killing turned into a rowdy demonstration against the government, which has its roots in political Islam.
Anatolian quoted the head of Turkey’s military General Staff, General Hilmi Ozkok, praising Thursday’s mass protests.
“But it must not remain as a reaction of just one day, a one-off event ... It must gain permanence, as something continuous, it must be pursued by everyone,” he said.
The call is seen as a warning to the government from the army, which helped topple an Islamist-leaning government in 1997, and follows comments in leading papers that the government should learn lessons from the mass pro-secular protests.
As Turks celebrated on Friday a public holiday set up by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan held a meeting of top ministers and security chiefs to discuss the shooting.
Mr Erdogan was quoted as saying in Star newspaper there was a deep conspiracy surrounding the attack, and the leader of the opposition Deniz Baykal was part of it.
The shooting by a lawyer was seen as an attack on secularism as it was against Turkey’s top administrative court which upheld rules restricting the use of headscarves. Newspapers said he confessed to shooting the judges because of their rulings.
Headscarves have become a symbol of a broader struggle over the role of religion in the European Union applicant country.
Large angry crowds pushed and booed ministers of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) on Thursday at the judge’s funeral. They also called for the government’s resignation.
‘HIDDEN AGENDA’: As recently as 1997 the army, regularly shown in surveys as one of Turkey’s most respected institutions, nudged from power a government perceived as too Islamist. That followed three coups.
The AKP has enjoyed strong support since a landslide victory in 2002, although Thursday’s demonstrations of tens of thousands of Turks were the culmination of months of tension between the government and secular establishment.
Secularists accuse the AKP of having a hidden Islamist agenda and cite recent attempts to restrict alcohol consumption and ease restrictions on religious education. The AKP denies it.
Mr Erdogan and his ministers have repeatedly criticised the court for its headscarf rulings and wants the rules eased.
Newspapers criticised Mr Erdogan’s absence from Mustafa Ozbilgin’s funeral attended by thousands of Turks. Gen Ozkok, accompanied by other top generals, and secularist President Ahmet Necdet Sezer were applauded as they arrived at the funeral.
The protests in Ankara, which spread to other large cities, were among the largest pro-secularist demonstrations since 1993 when a columnist from the staunchly secular newspaper Cumhuriyet was killed in a car bomb.
The shooting follows recent bomb attacks on that newspaper, traditionally a mouthpiece of the secularist establishment. Local media said on Friday the court gunman was connected to those attacks.—Reuters
