Turkish secularists take to the streets to try to prevent Erdogan from becoming president, reports Gareth Jenkins from Ankara More than 750,000 secularist Turks staged the largest demonstration in Turkish history on Saturday, marching through the streets of Ankara in an effort to persuade Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan of the moderate Islamist Justice and Development Party (JDP) not to run for the presidency later this month Following a series of speeches in Tandogan Square in the heart of the Turkish capital, the demonstrators walked to the mausoleum of Kemal Ataturk, Turkey's fiercely secular first president who founded the republic in 1923, chanting slogans such as "Turkey is secular and secular it will remain" and "Tomorrow will be too late." Under Turkish law, the president has little executive power but is able to veto bureaucratic appointments and delay the passage of laws by returning them to parliament for reconsideration. The incumbent president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, whose seven-year term expires in May, has repeatedly blocked any legislation which he has seen as threatening the Turkish establishment's often draconian interpretation of secularism, while also vetoing the appointment of hundreds of bureaucrats on the grounds that they were Islamist sympathisers. The Turkish constitution ensures that the president is elected by parliament, which, given its huge parliamentary majority, means that Sezer's successor will effectively be appointed by the JDP. Turkish secularists fear that if, as has long been rumoured, Erdogan has himself appointed as president, the JDP will have a stranglehold over the apparatus of government and will be able not only to fill the civil service with Islamists, but will finally be able to promulgate a raft of pro-Islamic legislation. These will include increasing religious education and lifting the current ban on women wearing headscarves in state institutions. Saturday's rally was organised by the Association for Ataturkist Thought (AAT), an NGO established to promote Ataturk's ideals, and was supported by over 300 other organisations from across the country. The Turkish police estimated that demonstrators had travelled to Ankara in more than 900 coaches and 250 minibuses. Tens of thousands more are believed to have driven to the capital in private cars to participate. Yet, Saturday's rally was also a sign of growing desperation. Erdogan has yet to announce whether he will put himself forward as a candidate later this month. But the secularists who marched on Saturday are only too aware that, if he does decide to stand, there is little they can do to stop him. In the absence of an effective opposition, many secularists are once again looking to the Turkish military to provide leadership. Significantly, the AAT is headed by Sener Eruygur, a retired former commander of the Turkish gendarmerie who is currently under investigation for allegedly plotting a coup against Erdogan in 2003-2004. Last Thursday, the current chief of the Turkish General Staff, General Yasar Buyukanit, held a surprise press conference in Ankara. Privately, the Turkish military, which has long seen itself as the guardian of Ataturk's legacy, made no secret of its opposition to Erdogan becoming president. Behind the scenes, the military has actively discouraged Erdogan from putting himself forward as a candidate, arguing that it would deepen the already dangerous divide between secularists and Islamists and urging him to choose a compromise candidate. But in public, the generals have been more circumspect. Last Thursday, Buyukanit refused to discuss individual candidates, preferring to comment that the military would like to see a president who was "a true secularist, rather than just somebody who claimed to be one". Nobody doubted that the warning was aimed at Erdogan, whom the military, despite his repeated protestations to the contrary, suspect of having an anti- secular Islamist agenda. Buyukanit also used a more subtle ploy to force Erdogan onto the defensive. He called for a cross border operation into Iraq to strike at militants of the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), who have long used camps in the predominantly Kurdish north of the country, both as safe havens and as platforms from which to supply units operating inside Turkey. In the week preceding Buyukanit's speech, 10 members of the Turkish security forces were killed in clashes with the PKK. The deaths further fuelled an already precipitous rise in Turkish nationalism and increased the pressure on both the military and the government to do something in response. At his press conference, Buyukanit complained that the military was ready and willing to launch a cross border operation but was being held back by a lack of political will on the part of the JDP government. In fact, in a series of reports and presentations to the government, the Turkish military has long argued that even a large-scale cross border operation would have only a short-lived, minor impact on the PKK's capabilities and that any benefits would be more than outweighed by the ensuring international outcry. This outcry would come not just from the US and the EU, but also from the Arab world, which it believes would regard any incursion not as an attack on the PKK, but as the invasion of an Arab country. But by publicly declaring that the government lacked the political will to back such an operation, Buyukanit was effectively undermining Erdogan's nationalist credentials at a time when, if he decides to run for president, he will need all the public support he can get. Nevertheless, Buyukanit's ploy was a gamble. Erdogan is notoriously impetuous and, although he too is aware of the international outcry that would result, the danger remains that he might yet order a minor incursion in an effort to appease domestic public opinion. The result could be disastrous, not just for Turkey's international reputation, but also for both the JDP and the military. This would be particularly so, since the PKK would simply withdraw before the advancing Turkish troops, wait for them to leave, then regroup and once again step up its attacks against targets inside Turkey.
