THE founding newspaper of modern Turkey is warning of Islamic fundamentalism in a media campaign seen as a secularist fightback against the government. “Are you aware of the danger,” reads the front page headline in Cumhuriyet (Republic), written in Turkish but in Arabic style from right to left. It has also run on television. The Arabic style is a coded suggestion to Turks that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) wants to reverse the reforms of Turkey’s revered founder Kemal Ataturk, which included replacing the Arabic script with the Latin for Turkish. “This government is the target of our campaign. In recent years anti-secularist developments are threatening Turkey and its institutions,” Cumhuriyet columnist Ozgen Acar told Reuters. It is a stark reminder of the great divide between Turkey’s secularists and those they perceive as Islamists bent on reviving the influence of religion in national life. The powerful secularist establishment, which includes the president, the military and judiciary, sees the AKP, rooted in political Islam, as posing a mortal threat to the status quo. The AKP, which swept to power in 2002 after years of mismanagement and corruption, denies any Islamist agenda. It accuses the relatively weak opposition parties of opportunism.
In his strongest comments since becoming president in 2000, Ahmet Necdet Sezer warned on Wednesday that Turkey faced a growing threat from Islamic fundamentalists. “Turkey’s only guarantee against this threat is its secular order,” Sezer told a gathering of military officers. He did not mention the AKP by name. Turkey’s armed forces are seen as the ultimate guarantor of the secular system - founded by Ataturk in 1923 - and as recently as 1997 ousted a government they perceived as tilting in an Islamist direction.