In Taksim Square a large crowd has gathered and is singing and clapping.  Several men in the center have interlocked their arms and are kicking up their feet and singing Turkish slogans. The police arrive and fire off tear gas. Everyone, including Yours Truly, runs. This way, then that because the police seem to be everywhere we turn. Tears stream down my face and I cough as I seek tear gas-free air. Turns out that the police had been ordered to stop all demonstrations on this May 1, 2007 to prevent a repeat of the deadly 1977 May Day demonstration exactly 30 years ago. Istanbulians were dismayed at the aggressive manner in which the police handled the demonstrations. 

If you’ve been watching the news these past couple of weeks, you’ve heard about Turkey’s political “crisis”.  I haven’t seen those televised reports, but I am here, living it. 

When I returned to Istanbul this past February, it was because I wanted to live where history was in the making, literally in front of my eyes. One of the crucial questions of 21st century politics will be how the world copes with the rise of political Islam. As a storyteller who writes about cultures, there is nothing more exciting than to be on the front lines of a country affecting major change. Turkey is a buffer zone between Europe and the Middle East and it is being pulled like taffy back and forth between them both. Tension has mounted in recent years as secularist Turks and Islamists have become increasingly polarized.  I knew something had to give, and so it has.

The main players in the crisis are the AKP - The Justice and Development Party, the CHP aka The Republican People’s Party, and the Military.
The AKP came into power in the last election of 2002. They are conservative and overwhelmingly Islamic. They hold most of the seats in Parliament and represent a majority of Turks. 

The opposition party is the CHP. Its membership consists of westernized, educated Turks who want to rid the country of all conservative Islamic influence. 

The military feels that it is their job to protect the secularist Republic established by Ataturk even if it means using force to do so. The military has wielded an enormous amount of power in Turkish politics, effecting 4 military coups, one as recent as 10 years ago. In modern-day Turkey, the military’s role as protector of Ataturk’s Republic is becoming increasingly irrelevant. And most definitely ill advised for a country applying for membership in the EU. But that didn’t stop the military from threatening yet another coup three weeks ago, on April, 27.

It began earlier that day when the AKP announced their nominee for the presidency, an Islamic Turk whose wife wears a head scarf. The Turkish secularists, already alarmed by the growing conservatism in Turkey, moved quickly to throw out the nomination based on a legal technicality. That same night the military sent an Internet message threatening a military coup if a more liberal candidate was not chosen. In a surprise move the court declared the nomination invalid.  In the following days, millions of Turks poured into the streets of Turkey’s three largest cities to send a message to the AKP that they would no longer tolerate an Islamic government.

Prime minister Erdogan turned the tables on the CHP when he announced, “Fine. Let the people decide.” An early general election date was set for July. The problem is that most Istanbulians will have left the city for their summer vacations. And when many of the ruling party’s constituency - poor and vastly outnumbering the secularists - will undoubtedly make their ways to the polls to elect the AKP’s choice for president. Ironically, it may be the utilization of the democratic process itself that weakens democracy in Turkey.

At first the situation appeared to me to be black and white.  Who needs more Islamic-influenced government? Obviously the CHP secularists was the side to be on. And this was going to be an easy story to write.
 

But as I looked deeper and spoke with more Turks, a more complicated reality emerged.

If the CHP is against a general election, does that mean they are opposed to democracy? If the CHP is for freedom, why do they oppose the head scarf? Isn’t freedom of religious expression a major tenet of democracy? 

As it turns out, Turkey under the rule of the AKP, has fared quite well. Economic growth has grown by 7%. Incomes in Turkey have doubled. And the country has made slow but steady progress towards acceptance into the European Union. 

The AKP claims to be a moderate Islamic party that accepts pluralism and the secular state. In fact its members often refer to themselves as "Muslim Democrats", inviting comparison with the "Christian Democratic" parties of Europe. If this is true, then what is the CHP’s beef with the AKP anyway?

Fear. Fear that the AKP has a hidden agenda and plans to institute  “sharia rule”, which is a legal system that regulates the public and private life according to Muslim principles. There is little evidence that the AKP plans to do so, unless you count openly Islamic bureaucratic appointments, a shift away from Ataturk’s Republic towards a modern democracy, and the head scarf wearing (prohibited by Ataturk, but regaining popularity with conservatives) wife of the AKP candidate for presidency. 

Fewer than 10% of Turks say that they want an Islamic state with sharia law so it would be impossible for the AKP to push this agenda. The AKP claims to be neutral on religious issues, not actively anti-religious (as is the case with the CHP) and not pro-Islamic.