On Turkish streets, local battles over Islam's role
Amid the deep political crisis over the country's presidency, secularists bemoan an incremental Islamization of everyday life on the local level.
from the May 9, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
Local Islamization: orchestrated?
The AKP has been wildly successful on the local level, capturing 42 percent of the vote in the 2004 municipal elections and taking over the mayoral offices in most of Turkey's large cities.
Since those elections, secularists have been quick to provide examples of AKP-run municipalities trying to introduce Islamic "lifestyle changes," from efforts to ban alcohol sales to brochures distributed to newlyweds which claimed, "Women who don't wake up early ... and a horse that doesn't obey your commands are useless."
Metin Heper, a professor of political science at Ankara's Bilkent University, says he believes examples like these have been blown out of proportion.
"I don't think those things have been orchestrated by the AKP leadership," he says. "I think those are isolated events and when the leadership found out what happened, they tried to stop it. I don't think a capital case should be made out of it."
Adds Prof. Heper: "Unfortunately, in this country, some people think that if someone is, in one way or another, a practicing Muslim, that someone would be enthusiastic to bring back a state ruled by Islam, and that is just not true."
In a recent interview in Newsweek, Gul, who has withdrawn his presidential candidacy after it was blocked, said charges of a hidden Islamization agenda on AKP's part are false.
"We have worked harder than any party in Turkey's history to make Turkey a member of the EU," Gul told Newsweek. "Why would we do this if we are trying to Islamize Turkey?"
RSS feed
