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Turkey’s election of 22nd July was meant to be about secularism, the creed that the republic’s founder, Kemal Atatürk, adopted in the 1920s, and which the ruling AK party (AKP) of Recep Tayyip Erdogan had been accused of subverting. It was to defend secularism that Turkey’s generals in May made known their displeasure at plans to raise the pious, affable Abdullah Gül to the presidency, and it was to resolve the stand-off that Erdogan sought a new mandate—a mandate that he has now said he will use to put Gül in the presidential palace.
With its fine economic record, the AKP was never going to lose; to assure itself of a working majority, however, it needed to shed its divisive Islamist colouring and become a party for all Turks. In Turkey’s southeast, those mainly Kurdish provinces that have been the epicentre of a vicious rebellion since 1984, the AKP set itself a harder challenge: to become a party for all Kurds.
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