When Turkey's foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, was nominated to the post of Turkish president, the army dropped heavy hints that it might mount a coup if he were elected.(The Week)(Brief article)

When Turkey's foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, was nominated to the post of Turkish president, the army dropped heavy hints that it might mount a coup if he were elected. He belongs to the AKP, Turkey's ruling party, which has Islamist roots and some Islamist members, and the army's leaders see the presidency as a vital political safeguard against threats to secularism. Turkish secularism is not religious freedom on the U.S. model, but the control of Islam and other religions by a ministry of religious affairs--and the imposition in an overwhelmingly Muslim nation of a naked public square. But this is fast becoming impossible in modern Turkey, where the evolution of ...