Turks divided on army's role in politics

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turks are deeply divided over the role the military should play in politics, with many giving a qualified welcome to the traditionally powerful army's latest attempt to intervene in the political process.

Turkey has been plunged into a crisis by a court challenge to its presidential election -- which the ruling Islamist-rooted AK Party looked set to win -- and a statement from the army signaling it could intervene to protect the secular state.

The army memo, posted on the Internet at around midnight on Friday, prompted comparisons in the local media with the coup of 1997 when the army pushed a government from office for being too Islamist.

"This was another coup. An Internet coup," retired soldier Suleyman Sonmez, who served in the army in Turkey's previous coups, told Reuters. "The army should tend to security not to politics ... This is enough, it must be left up to the people."

The government, which wants Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul to take the veto-wielding job of president via a parliamentary vote, has not acted on the statement.

But many Turks approve of the memo from the army, which is consistently voted Turkey's most trusted institution.

"The army saw a risk and they issued the memo. If that's what the army thinks then so do I," retired worker Osman Ak said, as he played with prayer beads. "If we can't trust the army who can we trust?"

Many people here acknowledge that an army active in politics does not sit well with a modern democracy aspiring to European Union membership, but accept it as preferable to a government they fear wants to unwind the secular reforms of modern Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

"If only another route had been taken, before the army spoke," said a civil servant who gave her name only as Hilal. "(But the army statement) was good ... I don't want Turkey to be another Iran."

Leftist student Emrah Tali also fears the AK Party may try to blur secular Turkey's division between religion and state. Muslim headscarves, worn by the wives of leading AK Party members, have become a focal point for those fears.

The AK Party denies any Islamist agenda.

"The army had no option," Tali said, adding however he was opposed to a coup, which he said would take Turkey backwards.

"The government wasn't taking the people into consideration ... it was saying we'll do whatever we like," he said, referring to the government's choice of Gul, a member of the government ousted in 1997, as candidate rather than seeking a compromise.

Even some of those who favor the government, and see Friday's statement as inappropriate, say they would want the army to be there should a government ever go too far.

"If they went towards an Islamist state of course they should intervene," said 42-year-old housewife Canan, who also wears the Muslim headscarf.