Easterner Merkel wins Germany's top political prize.

(From Turkish Daily News)

It was not as easy as she hoped, but Angela Merkel, a shy pastor's daughter from the ex-communist east, has finally crowned her unlikely rise to the top of German politics and will become the country's first woman chancellor.

A month ago, Merkel and her Christian Democrats (CDU) were riding high in the polls and widely expected to trounce Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats (SPD) in what was billed as a landmark election that would set Germany on a new course of reform.

But a disappointingly narrow victory for Merkel's party following a widely criticized campaign doomed her ambitious economic plans and forced …