ANKARA: Turkey’s parliament is poised to elect a former Islamist as president in what some analysts say could be a watershed in this secular Muslim country’s transition into a liberal democracy with a strong economy.

But hardline secularists, who blocked Abdullah Gul’s first presidential bid in April with a strong campaign against the militant Islamist past he says he has disowned, remain unconvinced.

Gul’s candidacy sparked a crisis in April and May in which millions of people took the streets countrywide to protest against the prospect of an AKP president and the army threatened to intervene to defend the secular order.

The crisis forced snap elections on July 22 and, much to the secularists’ dismay, the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) was voted back in for a second five-year term with a solid parliamentary majority.

“Gul’s candidacy underlines the fact that the AKP has won popular support to resist pressure from forces outside the political arena,” political analyst Dogu Ergil said.

“The Turkish electorate has demonstrated its desire for real democracy,” he said. “It has shown that it prefers rationality over fear, coercion and authoritarianism. It has chosen those who will serve them rather than those that dictate who they should vote for.” The AKP’s wide-based support in the July 22 poll, when it increased its votes by more than 12 points in five years to 46.58 per cent, was the result of its ability to address the public desire for stability in the country’s highly volatile economy, Morgan-Stanley analyst Serhan Cevik said.

The AKP, the conservative off-shoot of a now-banned Islamist movement, rode to power on its own as an untested party in 2002 when voters wiped out a generation of politicians in punishment for the country’s worst recession since World War II.

Since then, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has slashed chronic inflation, maintained sustainable high growth, attracted record foreign investment and more than doubled per capita annual income to $5,500.

It has also enacted a number of democracy reforms, expanding individual rights and freedoms and allowing it to launch membership talks with the European Union in October 2005.

“Political consolidation provided for the normalisation of the economy. Turkey is now in the midst of normalising its politics — all these are interrelated,” Cevik said.

“It was what Turkish voters did in 2002 that led to this change — they are the architects of the normalisation,” he said.

Opponents, however, argue that the AKP, contrary to its public pledges, remains true to its Islamist roots and still harbours secret ambitions to install an Iranian-style regime.

Even if the AKP does have such an agenda, the public will never allow it, Cevik said.

“Turkish people have internalised secularism, and Turkey is opening up, moving closer to a liberal democracy,” he said. “This is not a clash between Islamists and secularists; it is a clash between the status quo and the powers of change.” “Gul’s presidency could become a new opening” in strengthening democracy in Turkey and integrating it into the global economy, he said.

Secularists are also annoyed by the fact that Gul’s wife, Hayrunnisa, wears the headscarf.

“The idea that democracy and secularism will be endangered by a headscarfed lady in the presidential palace does not make much sense,” said Wolfango Piccoli, an analyst at the Eurasia group, a political risk consultancy firm in London.

Since proclaiming his candidacy for the presidency, Gul has taken every opportunity to appease his critics by pledging his commitment to the country’s secular fabric, but many still fear a fresh confrontation with the army if he is elected.

Ergil warned that any move by the military against Gul would be an affront to the people.

“The military will lose its legitimacy if it attempts a coup against the people it is tasked with protecting,” he said. “I believe the generals are smart enough not to do that.” Piccoli said the army remains an “unpredictable player” despite the fact that the AKP’s electoral victory has put the generals on the defensive.

“In the eyes of the generals, the problems with Gul remain,” he said. “They will adopt a wait-and-see approach, let Gul get elected and wait on the sidelines to exploit any wrong step he or the AKP might take.”—AFP