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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Turkey's Erdogan seeks early polls to end standoff |
| 2007-05-01 |
| Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday his Islamist-rooted government would seek early national elections on either June 24 or July 1 to resolve a standoff with the country's secular elite. Erdogan's decision set the stage for a test of wills at the polls with the secularists, including the military that had threatened to intervene in the standoff over a presidential vote and sees itself as the guarantor of Turkey's secular system. The secularist opposition has been demanding early national elections but Erdogan's ruling AK Party, which has presided over nearly five years of robust economic growth, is widely expected to win. The standoff has rattled Turkey's financial markets. The opposition's boycott of the presidential vote in parliament prompted Erdogan to seek early national elections because it left the AK Party short of the required quorum to get its candidate, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, elected. |
| Posted by:ed |