Turkey confounds skeptics with pragmatism, economics

ISTANBUL, Turkey -- When Turkey's prime minister showed up last week at a reception held by President Ahmed Necdet Sezer, he came without his wife, and thus demonstrated how different from fears his first year in office has been.

His wife wears a head scarf, which Sezer, an avowed secularist, regards as a symbol of female Muslim militancy. So he had decreed that political wives who wear them should not be invited. Many angry husbands boycotted the affair, but Recep Tayyip Erdogan uttered barely a murmur of protest.

His restraint is indicative of the pragmatism Erdogan has brought to the job, dispelling fears that his Islamic-rooted party's huge election victory a year ago today would inject Muslim ideology into the bloodstream of constitutionally secular Turkey.

Instead, Erdogan has taken pains to avoid confronting the secular establishment that had already driven an Islamic-oriented government out of power in 1997. He has steered clear of religion and focused on the nation's most pressing priorities -- fixing the economy and getting Turkey into the European Union.

Many see Turkey as a template for countries that are overwhelmingly Muslim yet also moderate and pro-Western, and Erdogan has done nothing to shake that image.

Meanwhile, his two-year-old Justice and Development Party is so popular that opinion polls say it would be easily re-elected and could even build on its large majority in parliament. But it has left more contentious issues on the back burner.

Erdogan has shown he's not necessarily afraid of a fight; his government bucked public opinion and agreed to support Washington's request to send peacekeepers to Iraq.

But it seems almost relieved now that Iraqi objections have rendered the whole issue moot.

He also faced a difficult choice over Cyprus and Turkey's support for a self-declared Turkish state in the northern half of the divided Mediterranean island.

Erdogan supported negotiating according to a U.N.-plan, which would have boosted Turkey's chances of EU membership but would have angered Turkey's military. In the end Erdogan bowed to the military, which has traditionally been the maker and breaker of Turkish democracy,

"This is a very pragmatic politician," said Bulent Aliriza, an analyst at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The Justice and Development Party's "performance has been quite striking," said Sami Kohen, a columnist for the Milliyet newspaper. "They have shown a significant degree of liberalism in politics, the economy and international relations for a party with Islamic roots."

It wasn't any sudden rise in Islamic fervor that swept the party to power, but the economy. Heavy debt and mismanagement had pushed the jobless rate to an estimated 20 percent, and the lira had been devaluing sharply, hitting 1.7 million to the dollar this spring.

Today interest rates are down, exports are up and the lira has stabilized.

The government has adopted human rights reforms, laws curtailing the influence of the military in politics, and measures aimed at expanding rights for Turkey's Kurds.

"This government that we saw as ultraconservative is more liberal than the previous government," Kohen said. "All those packages that the previous government was reluctant about, this government has shown the guts to pass."

The outgoing government, a squabbling coalition, has been an easy act to follow.

"A new crisis emerged every time a member of the coalition government opened his mouth," Erdogan said at a recent party gathering. "We pulled Turkey out of the riptide of those dark... and hopeless days."

But stability has meant putting off many problems -- Cyprus, the ever-simmering head scarf issue, and the Iraq crisis, which overshadowed the new government's honeymoon.

But stability has meant putting off many problems such as Cyprus and the ever-simmering head scarf issue. The Iraq crisis, which overshadowed the new government's honeymoon, also still needs to be dealt with.

A government that can't entirely have its way, even with two-thirds of the votes in Parliament, is tacitly admitting it isn't fully in control, said analyst Aliriza. "The real challenges are ahead."

The most serious rebuff came in March, when almost 100 party legislators broke ranks and voted against their leaders to reject a request to let in U.S. troops for the war. The prime minister then was Abdullah Gul; Erdogan was still barred from office because of a 1999 conviction and four months in prison for reciting a poem in public that the courts said challenged Turkish secularism.

Once in office, Erdogan successfully lobbied legislators to offer peacekeepers for Iraq, insisting Turkey must regain the trust of Washington, its crucial ally.

Despite the party's insistence that it has no Islamic agenda, secularists are still wary, noting that Erdogan and other party leaders have their roots in the country's Islamic movement.

President Sezer has complained of "attempts from certain circles against the secular nature of the Turkish Republic."

The fear was evident in the head scarf ban at his Oct. 29 reception honoring Turkey's national day. When Erdogan showed up without his wife, Emine, and was asked how she felt, he replied: "Put yourselves in my wife's place and decide for yourselves."

But he declined to be drawn into protesting. "We will suffer patiently," he said, "and continue serving."