Thousands rally against Turkish Govt

Hundreds of thousands of secular Turks demonstrated on the seafront of Izmir, Turkey’s third-largest city today, fearful that the Islamic-rooted government is conspiring to impose religious values on society.

Police deployed thousands of officers, a day after a bomb at a local market killed one person and injured 14 others. There was no claim of responsibility for the attack, nor evidence that it was linked to the demonstration.

Izmir is a port city on the Aegean coast that is a bastion of secularism, and Islamic parties fare poorly there.

The rally – a show of strength ahead of general elections on July 22 – follows similar demonstrations in Ankara and Istanbul last month. The huge turnouts were staged to put pressure on Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government, which nominated a presidential candidate deemed by the secular establishment to be Islamist.

The candidate, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, was forced to suspend his bid after the opposition boycotted the voting process in parliament. But the political turmoil exposed a deepening rift in Turkey, whose population of 75 million people is mostly Muslim, but endowed with a secular legacy designed to separate state and religion.

“These rallies have been useful in forcing the government to take a step back,” said protester Neslihan Erkan. “The danger is still not over. These rallies must continue until there is no longer a threat.”

Protesters, many who had travelled to Izmir from other cities, carried anti-government banners, red-and-white Turkish flags and pictures of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the revered leader who founded the secular republic in 1923.

lice initially estimated the crowd at about 200,000, but the number was believed to be much higher as more people arrived.

Erdogan’s government called early general elections and passed a constitutional amendment to let the people, instead of parliament, elect the president. The amendment must be endorsed by the current president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer.

Gul has indicated he could run for president in a popular vote.

Secularists fear that if Gul becomes president, the Islamic-rooted ruling party could challenge the country’s secular system unchecked. Sezer, a staunch secularist, had acted as a brake on the government by vetoing numerous bills and blocking the appointment of hundreds of officials.

Erdogan’s supporters have spoken against restrictions on wearing Islamic-style head scarves in government offices and schools and supporting religious schools. His government also tried to criminalise adultery before being forced to back down under intense European Union pressure, and some party-run municipalities have taken steps to ban alcohol.

However, Erdogan’s government rejects the claim that it has an Islamist agenda. It has done more than many other governments to implement Western-style reforms as part of its effort to join the EU, and has worked closely with the International Monetary Fund on economic reforms.

Some protesters in Izmir held banners that denounced the EU, which many Turkish nationalists believe is interfering in their country’s affairs, as well as the US, whose forces occupy neighbouring Iraq.

Turkey’s secularism is enshrined in the constitution and fiercely guarded by the judiciary and by the military, which had threatened to intervene in the presidential elections in order to safeguard secularism.

The military has ousted civilian governments in the past.