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| Europe |
| Erdogan Set To Be Turkeyâs PM, Pave Way For U.S. |
| 2003-03-09 |
| Voting began Sunday, March 9, in a by-election in which the head of Turkey's ruling party, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is expected win a seat in parliament, clearing the way for him to take over as Prime Minister and for the United States to deploy troops on the Turkish soil. Assuming it's not too late... The charismatic head of the Justice and Development (AKP) party is a candidate in the south-eastern province of Siirt, where 119,000 people are eligible to vote in election re-runs for three seats in the 550-member parliament. The AKP, a conservative movement with Islamist roots, came to power in November on a sweeping election victory. But Erdogan was not allowed to run because he once served a jail term for a fiery speech âinciting sedition.â Since then he has been seen as the de facto leader behind Prime Minister Abdullah Gul. But thanks to amendments passed by the AKP-dominated parliament, he can now stand in Siirt, where the November results were annulled due to voting irregularities. It is seen as a near certainty that Erdogan will win one of the three seats in Siirt, making him eligible to become prime minister. Gul, a close Erdogan ally, has already indicated he will step down. I'm not even going to speculate on the behind-the-scenes horse trading that goes into this. But I think anything Turkey gives us at this point will consist of transit rights. We're not going to be there long... |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |
| #2 It may be too late. Check out dailypundit's link to a story in a scottish paper. I'm going to be sick. |
| Posted by: Anonymous 2003-03-09 18:47:24 |
| #1 I hope the shoe is now on the other foot, and we can express reservations about having 40,000 Turkish troops enter the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. Get that number down to 5-15,000, and make their operations strictly humanitarian or no $15 billion. |
| Posted by: Jon 2003-03-09 16:16:41 |