Turkish gov't seeks popular vote

[maddezmom]

Source: AP

ANKARA, Turkey - Turkey's Islamic-rooted government, whose presidential candidate dropped his bid in the face of protests from pro-secular lawmakers, pushed Monday for a constitutional amendment that allows the president to be elected in a popular vote rather than in a parliamentary poll.

The withdrawal of Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul's candidacy for the presidency on Sunday was a new defeat for the government, which had to call for early general elections in a standoff that has exposed a deepening divide between the government and its opponents. Secularism is enshrined in the Constitution and fiercely guarded by the judiciary and the powerful military.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan planned to overcome the deadlock in Parliament with a constitutional amendment that would require a popular vote for president. Parliament began debating the proposal and could hold the first round of voting on the measure on Monday.

"Parliament is deadlocked. The correct thing now is for the people to elect" the new president themselves, Gul said as he dropped his candidacy on Sunday.

Parliament needed two-thirds quorum to vote on Gul, the only candidate in the running. The vote was a repeat of a first round that the Constitutional Court — siding with the secular opposition — invalidated last week because Parliament failed to reach quorum.



Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070507/ap_on_re_mi_ea/turkey_presidency

[Rydz777]

1. The dilemma

is that Abdullah Gul and the party in power is Islamist-lite and enjoys majority support. With the Presidency and majority control of the Parliament, they are quite capable of abandoning secularist features of the constitution that date back to the founding of the Republic by Kemal Ataturk. This is even more likely since the prospects of Turkey joining the E.U. are fading. I lived in Turkey for a year and secularism is a thin overlay of a deeply Moslem nation.

Two footnotes: (1) Abdullah Gul requires both his wife and daughter to wear the headscarf. (2) Sarkozy is opposed to Turkish entry into the E.U.

[ohio2007]

2. ""Parliament is deadlocked" ? not enough MP's even showed up to form a

quorum. So Parliment decided to "not decide"
pretty lame buck passing imo