Скачать или смотреть TURKEY: PRO ISLAMIC COALITION GOVERNMENT FIGHTS FOR SURVIVAL

(9 May 1997) Turkish/Nat

Ten months after coming to power, Turkey's pro-Islamic coalition government is fighting for its survival.

Dissent within the secular True Path Party threatens to split the coalition led by the Islamic Welfare Party.

The crisis has been fuelled by ever more blunt warnings from the army that the prime minister must curb the spread of Islamic militancy.

Turkey's burgeoning Koranic study groups have been thrust to the centre of a political battle between the county's Islamic and secular tendencies.

Such apparently innocent groups have been accused of spreading Islamic revivalist propaganda.

Claims that Islamic militants have been infiltrating Turkey's secular state have abounded since Necmetin Erbakan Islamic-hued Welfare Party took control of government after December 1995 elections.

Fears have been stoked by the army, who've been giving ever more blunt warnings to the government to tackle the spread of Islamic extremism.

In the generals' latest intervention, they issued a list of toughly-worded recommendations, aimed at curbing religious organisations.

Erbakan's government is now expected not only to close the Koran courses, but to place restrictions on traditional Muslim clothing.

And education reforms the army is insisting on are expected to lead to the closure of traditional Islamic schools.

The military, which sees itself as the guardian of Turkey's secular state, is worried that graduates of schools like these may press for the introduction of an Islamic state.

The editor of the "Milli Gazette", considered the mouthpiece of the Welfare Party, says there is nothing undemocratic about the aspirations of Turkey's Islamic population to live according to religious laws.

SOUNDBITE: (Turkish)
"It's a wish, within pluralism, without harming other people's rights and also acting within the existing law. There's nothing unusual about it, according to my point of view."
SUPER CAPTION: Ekrem Kiziltas, Editor of the pro-Islamic daily, "Milli Gazette"

Despite the rising influence of Islam on rural Turkey, life in the large cities continues to be assertively western in flavour.

The Welfare Party owes its taste of power to infighting between the two main secular parties.

But divisions within the ruling party's coalition in power are now threatening to bring the government down.

Former Health Minister Yildirim Aktuna is one of two senior True Party figures who resigned at the end of last month.

Aktuna said he and his colleague, the former trade minister, left in protest at the failure of party leader Tansu Ciller to curb the spread of pro-Islamic policies by her Welfare partners.

SOUNDBITE: (Turkish)
"A lot of people and institutions, apart from the Welfare party, have been displaying an anti-secular attitude. Gaining courage from the Welfare (party) being in power...They have started to put their actions, stands in this direction. That's why, everyone should see that, in Turkey this kind of incidents, in other words, thoughts of changing the secular system are not possible to be realised and will not be realised. The Welfare party should also see and understand this fact."
SUPER CAPTION: Yildirim Aktuna, resigned Health Minister, True Path Party Member of Parliament

This is the face of Islamic fundamentalism haunting the defenders of Turkey's secular state.

The Turkish army recently declared that radical Islamic groups now pose an equal threat to national security as Kurdish rebels fighting for an independent homeland.



SOUNDBITE: (Turkish)




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