After defeat, Turkey's AK Party set for tough poll

Weakened by a political crisis, Turkey's ruling AK Party is still expected to win summer general elections but looks increasingly likely to require coalition partners that could spell slower reforms.

Last week Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan brought forward general elections by three and a half months to July 22 in an effort to end a crippling standoff with political opponents that had unnerved financial markets and stoked fears of instability.

It was a rare concession by a party that has largely been able to ignore the opposition and has used its big parliamentary majority to push through IMF and EU-backed economic and political reforms since coming to power in November 2002.

Analysts still expect AK to win the general election but the success of the secularist opposition in derailing Mr Erdogan's plans to have his close ally, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, elected president may bode ill for the government.

In Turkey, parliament elects the president. Mr Gul, the only presidential candidate, pulled out of the race on Sunday after the opposition persisted in its boycott of the voting process.

A new parliament is now expected to choose a president after the July parliamentary election.

"AK will emerge as the largest party in the elections, but they may not be the dominant party that will again allow them to dictate their will in parliament and over the general political process," said Dogu Ergil, a professor at Ankara University.

The crisis has pushed smaller opposition parties into a flurry of mergers aimed at ensuring they pass the key 10 per cent threshold of votes required to enter parliament.

"The key is whether the current dissatisfaction will be translated into votes at the ballot box," said Semih Idiz, a veteran columnist at liberal newspaper Milliyet. "Don't forget that AK was only formed shortly before the 2002 election."

AK will face a tough time if it has to seek coalition partners who could deny it a free hand pushing through reforms.

Under single AK Party rule, Turkey has made great strides, achieving the start of EU membership talks and posting strong economic growth and low inflation after years of weak coalition governments and chronic economic instability and corruption.

"In the past, economic performance has been the number one criterion for the Turkish public in which way they vote and the government position will be to play this up, while the opposition only has the fear of Islam to push," said William Hale, a professor at Istanbul's Sabanci University.

Secularists, who dominate Turkey's judiciary, powerful armed forces and academia, accuse the AK Party of trying to increase the influence of Islam and undermining Turkey's strict separation of state and religion. AK strongly denies the claims.

Some secular Turks voted for AK in 2002, not because they shared its religious convictions but because they saw no alternative to the discredited political elite at the time.

But many may be nervous of voting this time round for a party that has failed to address sufficiently their concerns about religion and politics.

Such jitters were very visible at a recent anti-government rally in Istanbul which drew up to one million, mostly urban middle class Turks.

Many secularist Turks are also worried by AK plans to overhaul the constitution and have the president elected by the people instead of by parliament.

It remains unclear whether the reform proposals will survive an expected legal challenge.

"In order to appeal to a majority of people AK will have to convince them that the party does not have an Islamist agenda. I think they are ready to do this now, but it may not be enough to avoid some setbacks in the election," Mr Ergil said.

AK's core supporters are frugal, pious religious conservatives in provincial Turkey who have benefited from AK's reforms and are demanding a larger say in the way Turkey is governed, to the dismay of the old secular elite.

Many Turks acknowledge the current crisis is as much about the country's identity as a power struggle between parties.

And waiting on the sidelines is the powerful military, ready to act - as it did as recently as 1997 against an elected government it saw as too Islamist - if the secular state is believed to be at risk.