[A-List] Turkey: political crisis

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

President thwarts Turkish leader

Jonny Dymond in Istanbul
Friday December 20, 2002
The Guardian

Turkey was thrown into a constitutional and political crisis last night when
the president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, vetoed constitutional changes aimed at
getting the leader of the governing party, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, into
parliament.

Mr Erdogan is currently barred from standing for parliament because of a
previous criminal conviction.

Shortly after Mr Erdogan's AKP swept to victory in the elections in early
November, President Sezer indicated that he would look dimly upon
constitutional changes aimed at a single individual.

But, buoyed by the support of the parliamentary opposition, the new
government included amendments to the law which bars people convicted of
ideological offences in a package of human rights reforms passed last week.

Last night the president vetoed the constitutional changes, issuing a
statement that the amendments were "subjective and personal".

The amendments will now be sent back to parliament for further
consideration.

Until Mr Sezer's veto all had seemed set for Mr Erdogan, who is far and away
Turkey's most popular politician, to enter parliament in February and become
prime minister in place of the current incumbent, Abdullah Gul.

Because of electoral irregularities fresh elections had been called in the
south-east province of Siirt. Mr Erdogan had already announced that he would
stand. Once he was in parliament Mr Gul, it was assumed, would have stood
aside, possibly taking the post of foreign minister.

Mr Erdogan's ban sprang from a speech he made in 1999 when he quoted a poem
that compared mosques to barracks and minarets to bayonets. That earned him
a four-month spell in jail and a criminal conviction for inciting religious
hatred.

If MPs return the amendments unchanged, President Sezer will bow to the
popular will and sign them into law. But he is a stickler for constitutional
propriety and could force a referendum on the issue.

That would almost certainly be won by the government, but it would probably
come after the election in Siirt.