Resident Scholar  Michael Rubin

On July 22, 2007, Turks will head to the polls to choose a new parliament which will then select a new president. Tensions are high. The elections this year are perhaps the most important election in modern Turkish history and, already, the most tumultuous. This election season has already witnessed mass demonstrations, a constitutional crisis, Supreme Court ruling cancelling a parliamentary vote, and a controversial military statement have marked the election season. At stake is the future of Turkish secularism. If the ruling Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, also known as AKP) retains its parliamentary majority and is able to win the presidency, Islamists would control all Turkish offices and be positioned to erode secularism and redefine state and society.

If Recep Tayyip Erdoğan or, more likely, one of his fellow travelers ascends to Çankaya Palace--the Turkish White House--Turks face the prospect of an Islamist president and a first lady who wears a Saudi-style headscarf. Such a prospect has fueled speculation about intervention by the Turkish military, which traditionally serves as the guardian of secularism and the Turkish constitution. In December 2006, for example, Newsweek published an essay entitled "The Coming Coup d'Etat?" predicting a 50 percent chance of the military seizing control in Turkey this year. And, on the evening of April 27, 2007, the Turkish General Staff quietly placed a statement expressing its "concern" at threats arising during the election process to secularism and the Turkish constitution.

While concern about the future of Turkish secularism is warranted, alarmism about military intervention is not. There will be no more military coups in Turkey. Erdoğan and his foreign minister Abdullah Gül have sparked a constitutional crisis in pursuit of personal ambition and ideological agenda, but Turkey's civilian institutions are strong enough to confront the challenge. The greatest danger to Turkish democracy will not be Turkish military intervention, but rather well-meaning but naïve interference by American and European diplomats who seek stability, downplay the Islamist threat, and assume that the Turkish military poses a greater threat to democracy than the AKP.

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Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at AEI.