Army, protests may hurt Turkey's AK Party at ballot

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Powerful generals and secularist demonstrators are seeking to set limits to the powers of Turkey's Islamist-rooted government, but there appears little appetite for the coups that marked the country's troubled past.

The General Staff made it clear on Friday it disapproved of the candidature of Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul for the presidency -- seen by many as the last political check to the ruling AK Party's power. The government hit back with an unprecedented public rebuke to the "Pashas".

Turkey's powerful military has intervened four times since 1960. In 1997 it helped push out a government it deemed an Islamist threat. Gul, was a member of the 1997 government.

"I don't think they can do it. Those days are gone, but that doesn't mean they won't do it," said Semih Idiz, a veteran columnist at liberal daily Milliyet.

Many secularists fear capture of the presidency by AK, created from the ruins of the party ousted in 1997, will weaken the secular state. The president has some powers to veto legislation, influence official appointments and, more sensitive still, is formally commander-in-chief of the armed forces.

AK itself denies any Islamist ambitions and portrays itself as a centrist party free of the corruption that blighted parties swept from office when it won elections overwhelmingly in 2002.

"Many of us are fed up with this government because of its failure to take into account the importance of secularism in people's lives. The AK Party has done some good economic reforms but they fail to be conciliatory and that's because they are Islamists at heart," said student Emre Alpev at Sunday's rally.

Under Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey has made great strides, achieving the start of European Union accession talks and posting strong economic growth after years of weak coalition governments and chronic economic instability and corruption.

But critics say Erdogan has failed to address a deep-rooted problem for a growing population of 74 million -- how to assuage the secularists' fears while accommodating his core supporters who want Islam to play a greater role in their lives.

CRISIS

Idiz said million-strong protests in Istanbul on Sunday showed the AK Party had lost touch with parts of the population. It must now come up with ideas that will show it accepts secularism and that it will not meddle with religion, he said.

The government, which has cut back the army's formal state powers in line with its EU-backed reforms, has repeatedly said it backs secularism.

Critics accuse it of undermining secularism by, for example, trying to ease restrictions on the Muslim headscarf and promoting religiously minded supporters within the bureaucracy.

Turkey's government is now waiting for a ruling from the Constitutional Court on whether to annul the parliamentary vote for the president following a complaint from the opposition.

If the court rules in the opposition CHP's favor, the government will be forced to call an early parliamentary election. If it rules in favor of the AK Party, also known by its AKP initials, the presidential election process continues.

The "hard" armed coups of 1960, when three top ministers were hanged, and 1980, when politicians were interned, gave way to the "soft" or "post-modern" 1997 coup that relied on pressure and veiled threat. Now, many say, the army should stay its hand altogether. The appetite for intervention may have waned.

"The incessant nightmare of 'military interventions' which have been haunting Turkey... has stirred again and blackened Turkey's dreams of more liberties, justice, development and progress," said Bulent Kenes, a columnist for pro-government newspaper Today's Zaman.

Some Istanbul protesters praised the army's threat to intervene, but said they wanted it to stop there, suggesting Turkey's democracy has matured over the past decade.

The AK Party remains the most popular party in Turkey but analysts say it has to handle the presidential election carefully so as not to put in jeopardy its chances of winning another term as a single-party government in the next general election, due by November. A coalition could spell trouble.

"If the AKP continues with this mentality it will not be the armed forces who carry out a coup in Turkey this time, it will be the unarmed forces who do so at the ballot box," wrote columnist Tufan Turenc at Turkey's leading daily Hurriyet.

"It will be them who save the secular, democratic republic because the AKP should understand that the people's anger is boiling over," he said.

Sunday's rally was not just about preventing the government appointing a former Islamist as president but also underlined concerns the AKP is too focused on religious issues.