| This Sunday, Turkey, still in the early days of democracy, goes to the polls.
This vote was forced four months ahead of schedule when Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s political party (Justice and Development Party, or AKP) failed to get its presidential candidate elected in a parliamentary vote boycotted by the secular opposition. IN Network’s Rody Rodeheaver says while there’s a lot of talk about the future president, there’s a more immediate concern. “The general election is not to elect the president, but it is to elect the members of parliament, 550 of them. Then, once that new government is constituted, then they, in turn, will elect a president.” Tensions are high between the government and secularists, as well as the army, which threatened to take action if the government failed to ensure the separation of religion and state. That’s brought outside watchers to bear on the elections. Turkey is trying to get into the European Union. The land is of huge strategic importance to the European Union, Iran, Iraq and Syria, but there are underlying tensions over which way Turkey’s new government will go. Rodeheaver says, “The prayer here is that the country would not head toward becoming an Islamic state. There have been some tensions because of that and fears that might have been some sort of secret agenda in the original Parliament here, in their choosing of a president.” |